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DOI: 10.1177/0010880402435011
2002 43: 119Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration
Quarterly
Cathy A. Enz and Masako S. Taylor
The Safety and Security of U.S. Hotels A Post-September-11
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OCTOBER 2002 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration
Quarterly 119
HOTEL SAFETY AND SECURITY HOTEL
MANAGEMENT
© 2002, CORNELL UNIVERSITY
A
mong the many outcomes of the terrible events of
September 11, 2001, is a renewed interest in the safety
and security of hotels. This has always been an im-
portant issue, but it has become a top-of-the-mind matter for
hotel guests and managers alike. For one thing, experts have
warned that hotels themselves may become targets of terror-
ism.1 In response to those concerns, some hotel operators have
created new security procedures, such as conducting more
detailed background checks on their employees. Hilton Ho-
tels now requires customers to show a photo ID on check in,
for instance, while Starwood Hotels and Resorts has raised
The Safety and Security
of U.S. Hotels
A Post-September-11 Report
BY CATHY A. ENZ AND MASAKO S. TAYLOR
security standards in its parking garages.2 Industry experts have
added their advice to the discussion by urging hotel operators
to revise and update their safety and security plans for provid-
ing a safe environment for guests.
Safety and security standards are made up of two major

elements: (1) physical-safety attributes and (2) organizational
systems and plans to ensure safe operation. This report fo-
cuses chiefly on the first element, physical attributes, which
includes the installation of specialized equipment and the
provision of materials and information outlining safety and
security procedures. The second element, organizational sys-
tems and plans, includes employing and training safety and
U.S. hotels have a reasonably solid panoply of safety and
security equipment—but there also are
surprising gaps.
1 For example, see: Hotel Security Report, Vol. 19, No. 11
(October 2001),
p. 1.
2 Ruthanne Terrero, “Hotels Step up Security: Prepare for
Future Events
by Training Employees,” Hotel Business, October 21–November
6, 2001,
p. 15.
HOTEL MANAGEMENT HOTEL SAFETY AND
SECURITY
120 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly
OCTOBER 2002
The continuous flow of people in and out of

a hotel poses a longstanding challenge to the
property’s security and the guests’ safety.
security personnel, and establishing plans and
procedures relating to safety and security issues.
Before we turn to our main topic, physical-
safety and -security attributes, we touch on
changes in hotels’ organizational systems and
plans. To examine that aspect of safety, we con-
ducted a study of general managers’ post-
September-11 activities, investigating the degree
to which they had altered their organizational sys-
tems and plans.3 As a part of a larger survey to
gain insights into hotel operators’ reactions to
September 11, we asked hotel operators whether
they had reevaluated security procedures, made
changes to their procedures, tightened security
for guests, or added security staff. In contrast to
media reports that hotels had enhanced their
safety and security measures, our own study (con-
ducted one month after September 11) revealed
that over one-third of general managers surveyed
had done nothing to alter their security proce-
dures, and 25 percent had done nothing to
tighten security for their guests. As we discuss
below, this finding, though potentially disturb-
ing, may be due to the possibility that many ho-
tels already have reasonably complete security
procedures in place.
The results, shown in Exhibit 1, revealed that
GMs were not doing a large amount of reevalua-
tion of their security procedures (only 29 per-

cent indicated they had done a great deal), and
even fewer were substantially changing their pro-
cedures (only 12 percent reported making a great
deal of change). When it came to adding em-
ployees, about 70 percent of the GMs responded
that they had made no additions to their secu-
rity staff. While the overall picture would sug-
gest that little effort was devoted to rethinking
safety and security, some hotels reported making
a great deal of change. For example, luxury
hotels, upscale hotels, convention and con-
ference hotels, and airport hotels added security
employees and either reevaluated or changed their
procedures.
Already in place. While the data from our
post-September-11 survey show considerable
variations in U.S. hotels’ responses, what they
do not reveal is the degree to which hotels had
installed safety and security equipment before the
terrorist attack. It is possible, for instance, that
many hotels had already made considerable in-
vestments in safety and security features (in ad-
dition to any policies and procedures they may
have developed). To explore the question of safety
and security features in U.S. hotels, we devised a
safety index and a security index, and then ex-
amined how hotels scored on those indexes. Our
purpose was to quantify the physical-safety and
-security features in hotels and compare hotels
by price segment, location, hotel type, age, and
property size. This article details our findings.
Elements of Hotel Safety and Security
The continuous flow of people in and out of a

hotel poses a longstanding challenge to the
property’s security and to the safety of the people
in that hotel. Given the semi-public nature of
hotel buildings, it is difficult to distinguish among
guests, legitimate visitors, and people who are
potential threats. In preserving customer-service
standards, moreover, hoteliers may find it awk-
ward to lock the doors at certain times or to re-
quire identification for entry to the building.
Indeed, maintaining the highest possible stan-
dards of safety may stand in conflict with pre-
serving hotels’ hospitable and welcoming im-
age—creating potentially negative effects on
customer service. While the lack of safety and
security standards can be a liability, security that
is too strict (or obtrusive) may ruin customers’
service experiences. Customers may say that they
prefer hotels with high standards of safety and
security, but at the same time they may be irri-
tated when such standards cause inconvenience.
As a consequence, hotel operators need to strike
a sensitive balance between safety and accessible,
friendly service.
3 For a discussion of this study and its findings regarding
GMs’ attitudes and actions, see: Masako S. Taylor and Cathy
A. Enz, “Voices from the Field,” Cornell Hotel and Restau-
rant Administration Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1 (February
2002), pp. 7–20.

Quarterly 121
MANAGEMENT
EXHIBIT 1
Percentage of hotel GMs who implemented selected security
strategies after September 11
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0
Not at all Not much A great deal
Reevaluated security procedures
Changed security procedures
Tightened security

Added safety and security staff
SECURITY
OCTOBER 2002
Twin concepts. While the words “safety” and
“security” are commonly used interchangeably,
the two concepts differ in their focus. Safety in-
volves protecting employees and customers
within the hotel property from potential injury
or death. Safety issues deal with the effects of
accidents, hazardous materials, and fire, for ex-
ample.4 In addition to the safety issues we just
mentioned, hotel security goes beyond protect-
ing employees and guests and is also concerned
with preserving guests’ possessions and the prop-
erty itself. Security issues involve such matters as
theft and violent crime. Indeed, some experts
include safety as a category of security issues.5
We follow the experts’ lead in that regard and
treat safety as a particular form of security that
focuses on the protection of guests from injuries
(whether from accidents or criminal activity).
EXHIBIT 2

Safety and security indexes
Physical Feature Weighting Physical Feature Weighting
Sprinklers 0.30 Electronic locks 0.40
Smoke detectors 0.25 Interior corridors 0.20
Safety materials 0.20 Security cameras 0.20
Safety videos 0.15 Safety materials 0.10
Security cameras 0.10 Safety videos 0.10
Safety Index Security Index
Note: To obtain a score, each weighted item is multiplied by 1
if the feature is present and 0 if the feature is absent.
The resulting scores are summed and multiplied by 100 for a
final index score. For example, a property with sprinklers
and smoke detectors would have a safety-index score of 55 (out
of a possible 100). See Exhibit 11 on page 136 for an
example of how to use the indexes.
4 See: Dan M. Bowers, “Security Fundamentals for the
Safety Engineer,” December 2001, pp. 31–33; and
Raymond C. Ellis, Jr., and David M. Stipanuk, Security and
Loss Prevention Management (East Lansing, MI: Educational
Institute of the AH&MA, 1999). 5 Ellis and Stipanuk, op. cit.

Quarterly 123
MANAGEMENT
In conducting our study, we distinguish
hotels’ safety attributes (e.g., sprinklers, smoke
detectors, and guest-safety instructions) from se-
curity features (e.g., electronic locks and interior
corridors). We devised two indexes, one measur-
ing safety amenities and the other assessing secu-
rity equipment. We realize that an inventory of
various physical-safety and security features is by
no means exhaustive. (For example, appropriate
lighting is an important safety feature that is not
a part of our index and, in fact, is often over-
looked.6 Other omitted safety features include
fire extinguishers, accident-prevention and warn-
ing signs, and glass protection, to name a few.)
Moreover, the mere presence of such equipment
as electronic locks and security cameras does not
guarantee guests’ security in the absence of per-
sonnel who are well trained to implement a fully
developed emergency plan. On the other hand,
a hotel would be hard pressed to implement an
effective security plan in the absence of appro-
priate security equipment.
The Indexes
To develop the indexes of physical standards of
hotel safety and security (shown in Exhibit 2),
we drew from the American Hotel & Lodging
Association’s 2001 Lodging Survey prepared by
RealTime Hotel Reports.7 This annual survey is

distributed to general managers throughout the
United States. All hotels in the United States,
whether members of AH&LA or not, were given
the opportunity to participate in the survey, and
the four-page survey was distributed to 38,002
properties. The final sample was representative
of the population of U.S. hotels in geographic
dispersion, but underrepresented small hotels
(i.e., those with fewer than 75 rooms). Of the
7,923 hotels that responded to the lodging sur-
vey, a total of 2,123 hotels were included in this
investigation—only those that responded to the
survey by answering all safety and security ques-
tions and did not leave any blanks.
Respondents were asked to indicate whether
their hotel has specific safety and security fea-
tures (among other amenities), including elec-
tronic locks, sprinklers, smoke detectors, safety
materials, safety videos, interior corridors, and
security cameras.
Because some features are more important
than others to a hotel’s safety and security, we
weighted each feature on its relative importance
to hotel safety or security, based on our consul-
tations with hospitality-industry property-
management experts. For example, we accorded
greater weight in the safety index to sprinklers
and smoke detectors than to safety-instruction
materials, such as in-room safety videos. In the
security index, electronic locks received the great-
est weight, while security cameras and interior
6 An old, but authoritative discussion of the principles of

security lighting can be found in: Abe H. Feder, “Lighting
for Security,” Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration
Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 1 (May 1972), pp. 13–21.
7 The Lodging Survey was funded by the American Hotel
and Lodging Foundation and the data were collected
by RealTime Hotel Reports, now a part of Smith Travel
Research.
8 To determine how important the weightings were to our
study results, we ran the analyses with indexes composed of
equally weighted safety and security items. The pattern of
results was the same as that found when the features were
given weights according to their importance. With the
equally weighted features significant differences were found
for price segments, location type, hotel type, size, and age
of the properties. We also combined the two indexes into
one with equal weights for all features and again found a
similar pattern of results.
We accorded the highest weights to
electronic locks, sprinklers, and smoke
detectors, while also considering inte-
rior corridors and security cameras.
corridors earned lower weights. As shown in Ex-
hibit 2, we set the range of both weighted in-
dexes from 0 (no physical safety or security fea-
tures reported) to 100 (all of the safety and
security features are present).8
The average safety-index score for our sample
is 66.4 (with a standard deviation of 19.9), while
the average security-index score is 59.6 (with a
standard deviation of 29.4). These numbers sug-
gest that U.S. hotels score generally higher on

physical-safety attributes than they do on secu-
SECURITY
OCTOBER 2002
EXHIBIT 3
Safety Index
1st 2nd 3rd 4th Minimum Maximum Standard
Quartile Quartile Quartile Quartile Score Score Mean Deviation
All Hotels 7.1% 18.8% 39.1% 34.9% 0 100 66.4 19.9
Price Segments
Luxury 1.6% 1.6% 26.2% 70.6% 25 100 81.8 11.3
Upscale 0.0% 5.1% 36.2% 58.7% 45 100 79.1 11.3
Midprice, full service 2.0% 24.8% 45.7% 27.6% 20 100 65.4
17.7
Midprice, limited service 0.0% 3.3% 45.5% 51.2% 35 100 77.6
10.9
Economy 4.6% 18.6% 41.4% 35.4% 25 100 66.1 18.6
Extended Stay 1.6% 2.4% 38.1% 57.9% 25 100 78.4 12
Location Type

Urban 5.9% 15.9% 33.1% 45.1% 0 100 69.0 20.1
Suburban 5.5% 12.7% 42.5% 39.3% 0 100 69.8 18.5
Airport 1.6% 3.9% 36.7% 57.8% 25 100 77.4 13.4
Highway 7.5% 20.9% 43.3% 28.3% 25 100 63.2 19.3
Resort 10.1% 29.4% 38.7% 21.9% 0 100 61.2 20.5
Hotel Type
All Suite 3.0% 4.3% 39.6% 53.2% 25 100 75.9 14.7
B&B, Small Inn 13.7% 26.6% 46.0% 13.7% 0 85 58.2 20.3
Convention* 2.5% 11.3% 44.8% 41.4% 20 100 73.0 16.7
Extended Stay 10.3% 10.3% 40.2% 39.3% 25 100 68.4 20.5
Motel 12.6% 29.4% 40.1% 17.9% 0 100 56.6 19.8
Villa, Condo 9.1% 48.5% 28.8% 13.6% 25 85 55.3 18.2
Standard 1.5% 12.6% 38.0% 47.9% 25 100 73.4 16.1
Hotel Size (rooms)
20 to 39 23.9% 40.8% 29.1% 6.2% 0 90 47.7 18.5
40 to 74 9.9% 21.2% 42.0% 26.8% 0 100 63.0 20.3
75 to 149 2.9% 15.7% 42.7% 38.7% 25 100 69.3 17.7
150 to 249 0.7% 12.2% 41.0% 46.2% 25 100 74.0 15.1
250 or more 1.9% 3.8% 29.8% 64.4% 20 100 78.8 14.0
Hotel Age (years)
Less than 7 0.7% 3.6% 38.1% 57.6% 20 100 78.5 11.6
7 to 14 4.2% 11.7% 41.0% 43.1% 0 100 71.7 17.8
15 to 21 4.1% 23.2% 41.6% 31.1% 25 100 65.6 18.6
22 to 28 12.1% 29.3% 38.5% 20.1% 25 100 57.9 20.1
29 or more 14.0% 28.6% 37.3% 20.1% 0 100 57.3 20.9
* Includes conference centers.
Note: Quartile ranges for both indexes are: First quartile, 0–25;
second quartile, 26–50; third quartile, 51–75; fourth

quartile, 76–100.
Descriptive data for safety and security indexes (continues on
the next page)
Exhibit continues on next page
Quarterly 125
MANAGEMENT
Security Index
1st 2nd 3rd 4th Minimum Maximum Standard
Quartile Quartile Quartile Quartile Score Score Mean Deviation
All Hotels 16.0% 22.9% 29.1% 32.0% 0 100 59.6 29.4
Price Segments
Luxury 0.8% 11.9% 24.6% 62.7% 10 100 79.2 18.2
Upscale 2.2% 5.8% 32.6% 59.4% 10 100 78.7 17.2
Midprice full 1.6% 18.9% 48.4% 31.1% 0 100 71 16.8
Midprice limited 0.0% 10.4% 41.7% 47.9% 30 100 76.4 16
Economy 7.4% 21.1% 35.4% 36.0% 0 100 66.4 24.4
Extended Stay 2.4% 15.1% 42.1% 40.5% 10 100 72.9 18.1

Location Type
Urban 10.5% 21.3% 27.9% 40.2% 0 100 65.0 27.8
Suburban 11.2% 18.0% 31.7% 39.1% 0 100 65.3 27.5
Airport 2.3% 7.0% 33.6% 57.0% 10 100 78.4 16.9
Highway 13.6% 25.2% 34.1% 27.2% 0 100 59.2 27.8
Resort 30.2% 31.0% 22.3% 16.6% 0 100 45.7 30.6
Hotel Type
All Suite 6.0% 17.4% 30.2% 46.4% 0 100 70.5 24.0
B&B/Small Inn 34.5% 43.2% 13.7% 8.6% 0 90 36.1 26.1
Convention* 5.9% 15.3% 38.9% 39.9% 0 100 70.0 23.5
Extended Stay 16.8% 29.0% 31.8% 22.4% 0 100 56.0 28.3
Motel 26.0% 28.4% 28.4% 17.3% 0 100 48.2 30.4
Villa/Condo 54.5% 31.8% 9.1% 4.5% 0 90 28.0 25.4
Standard 3.6% 15.8% 32.0% 48.6% 0 100 73.2 21.3
Hotel Size (rooms)
20 to 39 52.9% 36.7% 6.2% 4.2% 0 90 25.5 23.3
40 to 74 21.8% 25.9% 28.1% 24.2% 0 100 53.4 30.5
75 to 149 6.6% 20.7% 35.5% 37.2% 0 100 67.3 24.1
150 to 249 3.5% 18.1% 38.9% 39.6% 10 100 71.5 20.2
250 or more 3.4% 12.0% 25.5% 59.1% 0 100 76.5 21.4
Hotel Age (years)
Less than 7 2.2% 10.6% 33.8% 53.3% 0 100 76.4 18.5
7 to 14 8.8% 26.9% 27.9% 36.4% 0 100 64.0 26.7
15 to 21 11.9% 28.3% 31.1% 28.7% 0 100 59.7 27.5
22 to 28 21.8% 21.3% 34.5% 22.4% 0 100 54.3 30.1
29 or more 28.9% 29.2% 23.9% 18.0% 0 100 46.6 30.9

SECURITY
OCTOBER 2002
EXHIBIT 4
Mean safety and security scores by price segment
Luxury Upscale Midprice, Midprice, Economy Extended
full limited stay
service service
Safety index Security index
82 79 79 79 65 71 78 76 66 66 78 73
100
90
80
70
60
50

40
30
20
10
0
Quarterly 127
MANAGEMENT
rity features. The standard deviations also show
that there is greater variation across hotels’ secu-
rity scores than in their safety scores. In addition
to the means and standard deviations, the range
of index scores from the minimum to the maxi-
mum are provided in Exhibit 3 (previous pages).
That exhibit breaks the index scores into four
quartiles and provides the frequency distribution
of scores in each quartile. These are provided for
the overall indexes, but are also broken down by
price segment, location, hotel type, property size,
and age.
As the frequencies in Exhibit 3 show, a large

percentage of hotels scored high on both indexes.9
More than one-third of the hotels earned a score
of 76 or higher on the safety index (35 percent)
and not quite one-third did so on the security
index (32 percent). On the other hand, substan-
tially more hotels scored low on security than they
did on safety. Under 10 percent of the hotels
scored lower than 25 on the safety index, in con-
trast to the 16 percent that scored lower than 25
on the security index and the 14 percent that
scored 10 or less on that scale. To determine
which hotel types are characterized by high or
low safety and security features, we examined
several different categories separately.
Categorical Differences
Exhibit 4 shows the overall safety and security
scores for each hotel segment. Our survey revealed
that the highest safety and security scores are for
luxury and upscale hotels. It is not surprising that
high-price hotels contain more of the safety and
security features than hotels in other price seg-
ments. What is surprising is that these hotels are
less likely than others to have what we consider
to be the most important single safety feature—
sprinklers (57.2 percent in luxury and 60.3 per-
cent in upscale, compared to approximately 70
percent in economy and extended-stay hotels).
That said, luxury hotels and upscale hotels are
more likely than other hotel segments to possess
all of the physical-security features on our list.
Luxury hotels are the most likely to have four of
the five security features: namely, electronic locks

(68.3 percent), security cameras (69.8 percent),
safety materials (99.2 percent), and safety videos
(9.5 percent). Upscale hotels also tend to have
the full array of security features. Although up-
scale hotels are not as likely as luxury hotels to
have electronic locks (63.0 percent) or security
cameras (59.4 percent), they are more likely to
have interior corridors (92.8 percent). Midprice
hotels without food and beverage facilities (i.e.,
limited service) scored high on the security in-
dex, primarily because of the high percentage of
hotels that feature electronic locks (78.8 percent)
and interior corridors (88.6 percent).
Economy hotels and midprice hotels with
food and beverage (i.e., full service) generally have
lower safety scores than do hotels in other seg-
ments (again, see Exhibit 4). Although those two
segments have higher percentages of hotels with
sprinklers than high-price hotels, economy and
full-service midmarket hotels are less likely than
others to have the full array of physical-safety
features on our list. Still, the full-service midprice
hotels are more likely to have sprinklers (65.4
percent) than are luxury or upscale hotels and
are just as likely to have in-room safety materials
(87.4 percent). However, the midprice proper-
ties frequently are not equipped with security
cameras (49.6 percent) or safety videos (2.0 per-
cent). Similarly, economy hotels are the most
likely of all segments to have sprinklers (67.1
percent) and just as likely as high-price hotels to
have security cameras (59.4 percent). Again,
though, safety videos are almost never available
in economy hotels for in-room instruction (0.6

percent).
Our examination of managers’ reactions to-
ward safety and security issues after the Septem-
ber 11 events, in concert with this work on physi-
cal features of hotels, reveals that the hotels which
we found to be safer and more secure in their
Despite a high percentage with sprinklers,
economy hotels and full-service midprice
hotels generally have lower safety scores
than do hotels in other segments.
9 The intercorrelation between the two indexes is r = .63,
indicating a meaningful relationship between the indexes
but not such an excessive conceptual overlap as to necessi-
tate combining the indexes into a single measure.
SECURITY
OCTOBER 2002
EXHIBIT 5
Extent of GMs’ security reevaluation by segment
5 (Yes, a lot)

4 (Yes, often)
3 (Somewhat)
2 (Not much)
1 (Not at all)
3.5 3.5 2.9 3.0 2.7 2.8 3.0 2.9 3.5 2.7 2.1
Lu
xu
ry
U
ps
ca
le
Fu
ll-
se
rv
ic
e,
m
id
pr
ic

e
Ec
on
om
y
Ex
te
nd
ed
s
ta
y
U
rb
an
Su
bu
rb
an
Ai
rp
or
t

Hi
gh
w
ay
Re
so
rt
physical attributes were also the hotels where
managers proactively responded to the terrorist
attacks by making changes to their safety and
security policies. Exhibit 5 shows that managers
at luxury and upscale hotels, in particular, reevalu-
ated their safety and security strategies, while the
management of hotels in the economy, full-
service midprice, and extended-stay segments did
little reassessment after September 11.
In summary, hotels in the high-price segments
of the lodging industry are most likely to possess
a full array of physical safety and security fea-
tures, with the highest safety and security scores
occurring in the luxury and upscale segments.
However, it is important to note that the most-
essential safety and security features are also
widely available in the limited-service hotels that
we studied. Indeed, midprice limited-service
properties scored better on both indexes than did
their full-service counterparts.
We believe that one reason for the strong
showing of limited-service properties is that many

midprice limited-service properties have been
built relatively recently. However, to determine
whether price-segment differences are really due
to the intervening variable of hotel age in some
segments we conducted analyses on segment dif-
ferences controlling for hotel age. Our results
Li
m
ite
d-
se
rv
ic
e,
m
id
pr
ic
e
Quarterly 129

MANAGEMENT
EXHIBIT 6
Mean safety and security scores by age of hotel
Under 7 7 to 14 15 to 21 22 to 28 29 or more
Years since construction
79 76 72 64 66 60 58 54 57 47
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

reveal that significant differences in safety and
security do exist across segments when taking into
consideration the influence of hotel age. We now
turn to an examination of safety and security fea-
tures for hotels according to the age of the prop-
erty. As we discuss subsequently, we also wanted
to determine whether a property’s geographic
location made a difference in its safety and secu-
rity score.
Age of Hotel
Recently built hotels generally have higher safety
and security scores than do old properties. The
percentage of hotels with electronic locks, sprin-
klers, and interior corridors declines dramatically
with property age (see Exhibit 6). Almost all of
the hotels built in the last seven years (92 per-
cent) have electronic locks, compared to 51 per-
cent of the hotels built more than 29 years ago.
Similar patterns can be observed for such fea-
tures as safety materials and security cameras, al-
beit to a lesser degree. For example, 95 percent
of the hotels built in the last seven years have in-
room safety materials, compared to 80 percent
of the hotels that are more than 29 years old. (It
goes without saying that retrofitting old hotels
with safety materials is easier and less expensive
than adding, say, sprinklers or interior corridors.)

SECURITY
OCTOBER 2002
Location and Region
The extent to which a hotel has safety and secu-
rity features depends heavily on its location type
(see Exhibit 7). Airport hotels earned the high-
est safety scores (77) and security scores (78).
Moreover, airport hotels were more likely than
other properties to be equipped with the entire
list of safety and security features. Virtually all
airport hotels are equipped with electronic locks
(95.3 percent) and safety materials (96.9 percent).
General managers in airport hotels were also
most aggressive in reevaluating safety and secu-
rity procedures after September 11 (again, see Ex-
hibit 5).
The resort anomaly. The picture is mixed
among hotels of other types, although resorts
came out particularly low on both scales. Resort
hotels had the lowest average safety index (61)
and security index (46) of all. The reason that
resorts as a group scored so low is that so many
of them lack a key safety feature—that is, sprin-
klers—and a key security feature—namely, elec-
tronic locks. Just 52.5 percent of the resorts we
surveyed had sprinklers and a similar percent-
age, 52.9 percent, reported having electronic
locks. Resorts were also weak on interior corri-
dors (46.5 percent) and security cameras (62.5
percent). That security-camera percentage for

EXHIBIT 7
Mean safety and security scores by type of location
Urban Suburban Airport Highway Resort
69 65 70 65 77 78 63 59 61 46
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

Quarterly 131
MANAGEMENT
EXHIBIT 8
Mean safety and security scores by geographic region
New Middle South East East West West Mountain Pacific
England Atlantic Atlantic North South North South
Central Central Central Central
65 55 79 6565 60 68 64 70 68 70 67 65 63 68 66 66 59 67 58
100
90
80
70
60
50
40

30
20
10
0
resort hotels is as many as 30 points lower than
the percentage for hotels in other locations.
These results do not necessarily mean that re-
sorts are cavalier about guest safety and security.
Instead, one must examine the characteristics of
one set of hotels compared to other property
types. It is interesting to see, for instance, that
urban hotels did not score as high on safety and
security as did suburban hotels. Hotels located
on highways and those classified as resorts also
scored low compared to those in other locations.
The customers at airport hotels, as an example,
are most likely focused on getting a convenient
and secure rest—perhaps during an impromptu
hotel stay. On the other hand, customers at re-
sorts may be in reasonably safe locations—often
gated and remote. Instead of convenience, resort
guests may well be focused more on their own
relaxation and the property’s aesthetics and am-
bience. The relatively low percentage of resort
hotels with electronic locks, security cameras, and
interior corridors may indicate that those features
are less important to a guest than they would be
in an airport or urban location

Geography. Another approach to analysis by
hotel location is to explore whether safety and
security vary among hotels in different geographic
regions. As shown in Exhibit 8, the quick re-
SECURITY
OCTOBER 2002
EXHIBIT 9
Mean safety and security scores by hotel type
76 71 58 36 73 70 68 56 57 48 55 28 73 73
100
90
80
70
60
50

40
30
20
10
0
All Suite B&B or Conference or Extended Motel Villa or
Standard
Small Convention Stay Condo
Inn Center
Quarterly 133
MANAGEMENT
sponse to this issue is that we found little sub-
stantial variation in safety and security scores by
region. A comparison of safety scores for hotels
in different parts of the United States indicates
no significant differences from one region to an-
other. The similar safety scores across regions may
be due to brand standardization and consistency

of safety features of hotels throughout the coun-
try. The role of governmental entities in regulat-
ing safety and security equipment does not ap-
pear to influence hotels’ decisions to provide
specific features. With the exception of local fire
codes, hotel operators’ decisions regarding secu-
rity equipment (e.g., locks and security cameras)
appear to be governed by franchise requirements,
while requisite safety equipment is also deter-
mined by corporate standards (and in some cases
building codes). The modest geographic varia-
tion that exists does not appear to be attribut-
able to local legislative factors, given the general
absence of legislation and the efforts of corpora-
tions to devise and impose their own standards.
Despite the overall similarities, however, we
did find some differences on security-index scores
among geographic areas (again, see Exhibit 8).
The highest average security indexes are found
in hotels located in the east-north-central region
(with a mean index of 68) and east-south-
central region (67). These scores are primarily
due to the high percentage of hotels in those re-
gions with interior corridors (81.9 percent in the
east-north-central region and 65.2 percent in the
east- south-central region) compared to hotels in
other regions.
New England hotels have below-average
safety-index scores and the lowest security-index
scores of all geographic areas. These findings are
attributable to the low incidence of electronic
locks (54.5 percent), security cameras (35.6 per-
cent), and safety materials (78.8 percent) in this
region’s hotels. Such low scores may be explained

in part by the high ratio of small hotels in
the region. Approximately 20 percent of New
England hotels are small inns or bed and break-
fasts. Looking at the other coast, hotels in the
Pacific region were the least likely to have inte-
rior corridors (51.4 percent) and less likely to have
sprinklers (57.9 percent) than hotels in the other
regions, contributing to the low scores for Pa-
cific properties.
Hotel Types
We found that safety and security scores varied
according to hotel type. All-suite hotels, confer-
ence and convention hotels, and standard full-
service hotels were the specific hotel types that
scored among the highest on the safety and se-
curity indexes, as Exhibit 9 reveals. These hotel
types were most likely to possess a full array of
safety and security features. However, we found
differences among those three hotel types based
on whether they featured sprinklers, electronic
locks, or interior corridors. All-suite hotels, for
instance, are the most likely to have sprinklers
(86 percent), while standard hotels constitute
the highest percentage of hotels with electronic
locks (86.7 percent) and interior corridors (83.7
percent).
Motels as a class have the lowest safety and
security scores. In particular, we found that few
motels have sprinklers (37.9 percent) or interior
All-suite hotels, conference and convention
hotels, and standard full-service hotels had
high scores on the safety and security indexes.

corridors (39.9 percent). In marked contrast,
convention and conference hotels not only score
high on the safety and security indexes but were
active in reevaluating their safety and security
procedures after the terrorist attacks.
Condos and B&Bs. Also scoring low on se-
curity features were condos (and villas) and small
inns (including B&Bs). Again, few of these types
of accommodation have electronic locks (28.8
percent for condos and 30.2 percent for small
inns) or security cameras (18.2 percent for con-
dos and 23.7 percent for small inns). In addi-
tion, only 39.4 percent of villas and condos sur-
veyed have sprinklers. As is the case with resorts,
however, these findings may be attributable to
the markets that condos and small inns serve.
B&Bs and small inns, for example, focus on pro-
viding the experience of a home away from home,
and the aesthetics and ambience of the proper-
ties might be harmed by obvious or excessive at-
tention to security. Along that line, to attract
vacationers, the operators of villas and condos
may feel that they differentiate themselves from
SECURITY
OCTOBER 2002

traditional hotel products by avoiding common
amenities (such as electronic locks and security
cameras). In short, their low safety scores may
reflect a conscious decision to signal the guest
that these specialized accommodations constitute
a distinct product that requires only modest safety
measures by their very nature.
Hotel Size Matters
Large hotels generally have more safety and se-
curity equipment than do hotels with few rooms,
as Exhibit 10 shows. The features included in
the indexes are more likely to be installed in large
hotels than in small hotels, with the exception of
safety videos. In particular, we found a substan-
tial difference in the safety and security scores of
hotels with fewer than 40 rooms and those in all
other size categories. Electronic locks are installed
in 88 percent of the hotels with 250 or more
rooms, for instance, compared to 19.4 percent
of hotels with fewer than 40 rooms. The con-
trast also carries over to moderate-size hotels. The
percentage of hotels with 40 to 74 rooms that
have electronic locks (62.3 percent) is three times
greater than that 19.4-percent figure for small
hotels. The same can be said for sprinklers and
security cameras.
Hotels with the Most Safety and
Security Equipment
When we combine the profiles of hotels by size,
type, and location, it appears that large luxury
hotels located in urban areas have significantly
higher safety- and security-index scores than do

other hotels. The age of luxury hotels did not
affect the degree of physical safety or security that
they offered, despite the general tendency of new
hotels to rack up high scores. The fact that luxury
hotels have consistently high physical-safety and
-security scores for both new and old properties
may be attributed to frequent renovations and
investments that allow managers to update safety
and security equipment in those properties. Up-
scale hotels also score high on our safety and se-
curity indexes—particularly large, new airport
hotels. Unlike luxury hotels, the age of upscale
hotels does make a difference in a hotel’s score,
with new hotels featuring more safety and secu-
rity equipment than found in old ones. In sum-
mary, large, urban, luxury hotels and new, large,
upscale airport hotels are the hotels carrying the
highest safety and security scores.
Among the hotel types that have room for
improvement, old resort and small economy
motels tend to offer the least safety and security
equipment. Aside from the age and size of these
properties, motels that are in resort locations
(safety index of 51 and security index of 35) and
in urban locations (safety index of 54 and secu-
rity index of 47) have significantly lower average
safety and security indexes than do motels in
other locations. Because urban locations have a
disproportionately high number of old proper-
ties, the low index scores associated with
urban motels may be a function of age more than
of location. Finally, resort-area motels offer the
least desirable combination of safety and secu-
rity features.

Conclusion
Our safety and security indexes offer a prelimi-
nary glimpse of the equipment installed by the
U.S. lodging industry to protect guests and em-
ployees and to provide a secure environment.
While the indexes focus on the existence of vari-
ous features and not on the effectiveness of their
use, our coincident study of GMs’ reactions to
security concerns offers some insight into how
managers are reevaluating their safety procedures
(or are not doing so).
We found four characteristics that distin-
guished high-scoring hotels from low-scoring
properties, namely, price segment, location, num-
ber of rooms, and age. On balance, luxury and
upscale hotels, airport and urban hotels, large
properties, and new hotels are most likely to
maintain a high level of safety and security ameni-
ties. In contrast, old, small, economy, and resort
motels are the properties least likely to provide
the safety and security features that we studied.
We encourage general managers to review their
own properties on the physical features we used
On balance, luxury and upscale hotels, airport
and urban hotels, large properties, and new
hotels are most likely to maintain a high level
of safety and security amenities.

Quarterly 135
MANAGEMENT
to create our indexes. Using the weightings noted
in Exhibit 2 and the data provided in Exhibit 3,
it is possible to calculate your own safety and se-
curity score and then compare your hotel’s in-
dexes to those of other hotels in your hotel type,
price segment, age category, location, and room
size. The example in Exhibit 11 (overleaf ) shows
a calculation of the safety index for a hypotheti-
cal upscale hotel. While we would not advocate
that the indexes that we have created are defini-
tive indicators of safety and security, they do of-
fer a point for contrast and comparison. (Again,
we emphasize that hotels offer many other safety
features in addition to those we studied.)
EXHIBIT 10
Mean safety and security scores by size of property
20 to 39 40 to 74 75 to 149 150 to 249 250+
Number of rooms
48 25 63 53 69 67 74 72 79 76
100
90

80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
The scores on the indexes alone do not tell
the full story, however. Safety and security equip-
ment is useful only to the extent that a hotel also
has a complete plan for its use, maintenance, and
upgrade. The fact that some hotels score high on
the indexes does not guarantee that they are
physically safe and secure, since those hotels must
also have appropriate management policies. With
careful policy implementation, on the other hand,
low-scoring hotels could, in fact, be safe and se-
cure. What the indexes show is only the equip-
ment that a given set of hotels may bring to bear
in conjunction with a set of safety and security
policies.

SECURITY
OCTOBER 2002
We note again, however, that the hotels in
categories that earned high scores on physical
features (e.g., airport hotels) were also those cat-
egories where the managers were most actively
reevaluating their procedures after the terrorist
attacks. This may suggest that managers whose
hotels are not well equipped may not be in a
position to alter or upgrade their emergency
plans. Alternatively, the confluence of equipment
and planning may suggest that high-scoring
hotels expressly consider it their mission to
provide their customers with a safe and secure
environment.
The events of September 11 have focused
many Americans’ attention on their security when
traveling. Likewise, many sectors of the hotel
industry are also giving greater scrutiny to safety,
with revised check-in policies and enhanced lobby
security. Nevertheless, the actual effects of a given
set of safety and security policies and equipment
is not clear. While some operators are reviewing
policies and procedures, others may be reluctant
to disturb their existing protocols because of the

risk of destroying their property’s ambience. For
economy hotels in particular, the challenge of
balancing the needs of price-sensitive customers
and the desires of profit-focused owners with
needed safety enhancements is not easily resolved.
For all hoteliers, the challenge lies in making
careful choices that provide appropriate standards
for safety while not interfering with the
hospitality and service levels that customers have
come to expect. As crucial as physical-safety and
-security features are for protecting customers and
securing their possessions, hospitable service is
also essential to customers’ satisfaction. While the
airlines, for example, have no choice but to in-
convenience customers with careful and some-
times intrusive security procedures, hoteliers gen-
erally wish neither to compromise basic security
standards nor interfere with their service concept.
We believe that the traveling public should be
appreciative that so many hotels have equipped
their physical facilities with essential safety and
security features—even though many of those fea-
tures are not required by any building code. We
hope that this preliminary study will help both
operators and the general public to have a better
understanding of the scope and profile of safe
and secure hotels in America. �
EXHIBIT 11
Sample safety index for a hypothetical upscale hotel
Feature Weighting × Present (1), Absent (0) = Subtotal
Sprinklers 0.30 × 1 = 0.30

Smoke detectors 0.25 × 1 = 0.25
Safety materials 0.20 × 0 = .00
Safety videos 0.15 × 0 = .00
Security cameras 0.10 × 1 = 0.10
Score .65
Safety Index
The hypothetical upscale hotel has sprinklers, smoke detectors,
and
security cameras, but not safety materials or safety videos.
Thus, its
score is .65, which is multiplied by 100, for an index of 65. For
a com-
parison, the mean safety index for upscale hotels is 78.2, as
shown in
Exhibit 4 (page 126).
© 2002, Cornell University.
Cathy A. Enz, Ph.D., is the Lewis G. Schaeneman, Jr., Professor
of Innovation
and Dynamic Management at the School of Hotel
Administration at Cornell
University, where she is also the executive director of the
Center for Hospitality
Research ([email protected]), and where Masako S. Taylor,

MMH, is a Ph.D.
candidate ([email protected]). The authors gratefully
acknowledge the assis-
tance of Brian Ferguson of Smith Travel Research in providing
access to this
comprehensive database collected by RealTime Hotel reports
prior to its acquisi-
tion by Smith Travel Research.
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The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0002716212438198
2012 642: 228The ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science
Brandon Berry
Possessions
Reflections of Self from Missing Things: How People Move On
from Losing

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228 ANNALS, AAPSS, 642, July, 2012
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.
Keywords: self; memory; material culture; loss; social
psychology; ethnography
When attempts to locate an object fail, they offer insights into
social psychology. After

realizing that an object has gone missing, indi-
viduals are often troubled by unsettling reflec-
tions of self. They can no longer count on the
practical and emotional enhancements of self
that the object affords or, more disturbingly,
rely on their customary sense of competency in
managing their possessions. As they try to find
the missing object, individuals also search for
ways to escape or forestall these forms of dis-
quiet, sometimes preserving or restoring their
sense of self by relinquishing the effort to find
the object.
Every response, from apathetic resignation
to endless searching, involves a folk theory of
what has actually been lost and an informal
Brandon Berry is a PhD candidate in sociology at the
University of California, Los Angeles. His work is in
the naturalistic social psychology of memory, material
objects, aging, loss, and the self.
NOTE: I thank Jack Katz, Eli Anderson, Noriko
Milman, Bob Emerson, and the Yale ethnography
group for their support and useful criticisms of a
previous draft.
DOI: 10.1177/0002716212438198
Reflections of
Self from
Missing Things:
How People
Move On from

Losing
Possessions
By
BRANDON BERRY
REFLECTIONS OF SELF FROM MISSING THINGS 229
experiment in what it takes to resist or defuse the negative
reflections of self that
the loss threatens to generate. Through strategic maneuvering,
individuals find
ways to avert the tumult aroused by the loss, though each comes
with its own
pitfalls and sacrifices. Recovering the lost object does not
necessarily bring reso-
lution, and sometimes the situation is resolved without finding
the object at all.
This study analyzes four different ways in which individuals
overcome the
challenges posed by losing such personal possessions as a cell
phone, a set of keys,
a wedding ring, or a purse or wallet and manage the
uncomfortable reflections of
self that are provoked by the discovery of their loss.
Moving On from Breaches in the Taken-for-Granted

Sociologists have documented what happens when the tacit,
taken-for-granted
order of social life comes under threat, but few have examined
how people move
on from these unsettled states. In his effort to tease out the
underlying rules of
sociality, Harold Garfinkel (1967) set up “breaching
experiments” to examine how
violations of the accustomed order evoke moral responses in
their perceived vic-
tims. He reported the awkwardness that individuals feel when
someone enters an
elevator and stands facing the “wrong” way. He showed that
some people become
angry when their tic-tac-toe competitor erases their mark and
substitutes his or
her own. He identified the upset unsuspecting families
experience when one of
their members suddenly exhibits amnesia and ignores the
familial bond, treating
the home as a hotel. Garfinkel was interested in the underlying
rules of social
interaction that become visible when they are violated, and he
did not explore, in
any great detail, what people do after they notice that the social
order has been
disturbed.
These experiments provide some clues, however, that
individuals experiencing
a breach in the orderliness of social interaction may take
remedial actions that
alleviate frustration and calm anger. In an experiment in which
subjects were led
to believe they were participating in a study of a novel kind of
counseling, for

instance, each was paired with a person who was portrayed as a
counselor-in-
training. The person posing as the counseling trainee responded
to the subject’s
genuine questions with random “yes” and “no” answers, giving
them what at
times amounted to contradictory advice. Although some subjects
expressed con-
fusion and frustration over the apparent contradictions, many
tried to make sense
of the answers, and some actually reached such an
understanding despite the
randomness of the responses they received. In making some
kind of sense from
the counselor’s answers, subjects typically moved toward a
resolution of their
initial confusion and dismay.
Shifting from experimentation into naturally occurring social
life, Melvin
Pollner (1974) described the paths a person charged with a
traffic violation and
a police officer take when they meet in traffic court to maintain
a largely taken-
for-granted sense that they do in fact share a world in common
despite their
230 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
disagreement over what happened on the street. Rather than

perceiving a breach
in their assumption of a shared reality, they transform the
ontological challenge,
the struggle over whose account is true, into a moral one. In a
variety of ways,
each levels a claim about why the other, due to some kind of
defect in their power
of observation or honesty in reporting it, must be unable to tell
the court what
“really” happened. Pollner’s study shows how individuals
attempt to restore an
untroubled sense of intersubjectivity when flirting with its
breach.
Following in this tradition of work, this project focuses on the
effort to move
on from challenges to individuals’ taken-for-granted grounding
in the material
environment that arise from losing track of a material object. In
documenting
how individuals seek to recover the sense of untroubled
possession in the face of
their discovery that their mastery of objects may in fact be
tenuous or illusory, it
shows the ways commonplace material things elicit particular
kinds of self-
consciousness. It shows that individuals’ sense of self is
dynamically intertwined
with how their possessions are arranged around them. Losing
personal belong-
ings creates a breach in their expectations, and their responses
to this predica-
ment suggest that a resolution may form through an effort to
retrieve the lost
object, even if it is unsuccessful.

Methods
Part of a larger investigation into the nature of property loss,
this study is based
on just over five hundred cases of people losing everyday items.
The data come
from four distinct collection strategies pursued from 2006 to
2008 in Los Angeles
and several other cities. First, I observed forty-four naturally
occurring losses in
public places, eavesdropping on and sometimes speaking with
folks at the booths,
offices, and service counters that handle inquiries about lost and
found objects at
airports, malls, grocery stores, coffee shops, farmers markets,
festivals, sporting
events, museums, concerts, and similar venues.
The second strategy involved soliciting and receiving 397 first-
person narra-
tives of recent and vivid experiences of property loss. Four-
fifths came from
people who had posted a solicitation on a lost-and-found Web
site such as
craigslist.com and lostandfound.com. About one out of four
responded to my
request for a step-by-step description of the event. These
narratives averaged
two and a half single-spaced pages in length, and about half of
the informants
responded to follow-up questions whereby I tried to clarify
murky descriptions
and patch incomplete narratives. In an effort to obtain the whole
story, I
requested updates from a third of all informants either three
months, one year,

or two years later.
I also completed forty-four face-to-face interviews with people
who had
recently lost something. Participants were selected either
through a snowball
sampling procedure or a chance meeting. During these open-
ended, semistruc-
tured interviews, I asked my informants to describe the details
of a recent
experience in which they had lost an object from beginning to
end. Typically,
these interviews lasted 10 to 20 minutes and were recorded as
jottings in situ.
Fourth, I had twenty undergraduate students keep a journal of
their every-
day losses and related experiences over the course of a month.
These “lost
things journals” were an attempt to get at the personal
experiences of loss that
people would otherwise not reveal to others because the events
were trivial,
fleeting, or embarrassing. On average, each student reported
about ten losses
within the one-month period. The study’s findings derive from
the technique of

analytic induction as described by Charles C. Ragin (1994) and
Howard S.
Becker (1998).
Ways of Moving On
In contrast to Garfinkel’s experiments, which were about how
unsuspecting
people respond to having the rug pulled out from under them,
this study is about
how people regain their balance and move on. It reports how
individuals evade
the social-psychological obstacles aroused by losing personal
belongings. I found
that they pursued one of four paths: (1) moving on without
searching for the lost
object, (2) resolving the problem by successfully recovering the
lost object, (3)
moving on despite failing to find it, and (4) moving on by
replacing it.
Typically, the paths toward moving on from property loss are
paved with obsta-
cles deriving from one of three dimensions of self-reflection:
how individuals see
themselves in light of having lost personal possessions; how
individuals imagine
FIGuRE 1
Ways of Moving On
Loss Discovery
Search
Recovery (2) Failure (3)

Replacement (4)
No Search (1)
others see them; and how individuals experience their world
without the sym-
bolic and/or practical scaffolding conferred by the lost object.
Moving on without searching
To find closure without searching is the shortest path, and often
the first to
emerge after discovering a loss. It affirms that one’s current
course of conduct is
greater than the value of potentially recovering the missing
object. Allegiance to
one’s ongoing path and resistance to the effort that searching
entails moves an
individual on in one of two ways: either to deny that the object
is permanently
lost and imagine that it will reappear on its own or to embrace
the idea that the
object has been lost irretrievably.
The first route emerges when, realizing that a possession has
unexpectedly
disappeared, individuals avoid a sense of loss and the damning

reflections of self
it evokes by denying that anything is threateningly absent. They
believe, and at
times hope, that the thing is probably around the house, the
office, the car, or
wherever, but at the moment is hidden from them for some
reason. They might
still want the item, and can imagine a time in the not-so-distant
future when they
will really need it, but they decide to allow the item to reveal
itself naturally. They
go on with life as usual, suppressing anxieties that might
compel them to search
for it immediately and betting that it will turn up in the course
of their normal
routine. They go on with a sense that the object is not at risk of
becoming even
more thoroughly concealed or, worse, permanently lost.
The absence does not point to a failing in the person because
they feel that
chaotic forces have descended upon them temporarily. They
point to conditions
that make it difficult to find something: the fact that their house
is a bit messy or
that they are engaged in a consuming project at work and cannot
keep proper
track of things. Maneesh, a 30-year-old graduate student in
economics living in
San Diego, preserved a sense of self-efficacy in his management
of objects. After
briefly looking around for his misplaced laundry room key and
feeling mildly
frustrated, Maneesh decided, “No big deal, I’ll just wait until
the key pops up on
its own. The place is a mess; it’s around here somewhere.” He

noted that he
would rather wear “slightly soiled clothes” than spend his time
searching for a
“needle in a haystack,” especially since he was sure that the key
would show up
eventually. By avoiding a search in this way, individuals
maintain a self that is
independent from the absent object. Putting off the search
affirms the idea that
who they really are is not affected by the object’s absence.
Maneesh put off
searching for the key for a week, effectively saying that not
having the key and,
by extension, being unable to wash his clothes did not unsettle
him enough to
require immediate action.
Another way to put off a search and to hold on to the sense that
one’s self has
not been fundamentally affected is by understanding that
internally derived
chaotic forces, such as feeling tired or having consumed too
much alcohol, are
temporarily getting in the way. Katie, a 21-year-old student in
Boulder, decided
not to look for her keys until the next morning since she has
trouble finding

things when she is “beyond buzzed,” as she put it. That she
cannot readily find
something is not a sign of anything deficient about her abilities;
rather, she had
other things going on at the moment.
Moving on derives from the individual’s sense that the thing
will reappear
eventually, that in the normal course of life it will
serendipitously reveal itself—a
belief that suggests a kind of metaphysical connection between
self and object
that will make a difference once the chaotic forces pass.
Individuals demonstrate
this sensibility when they redirect their initial concern about an
absence and set-
tle on a strategy of serendipity. When Renee realized she had
not seen her Kodak
digital camera for a suspiciously long time after returning from
a ski trip, she
reasoned, “My ski jacket has an inner coat and outer shell, each
with pockets. My
ski pants also have pockets. Then there is the question of
whether it was in the
boot bag, my purse, my carry-on backpack, or a pocket in my
suitcase. Then I
wondered if it had fallen out of a bag and was in my brother’s
car or had slipped
under the bed. With so many places where it could be stashed, I
truly believed it
would just show up without me having to look for it.”
If and when the thing reemerges on its own, individuals get a
double reward.
The loss or gap is plugged and their hunch is confirmed. The
latter can also con-

vey a supportive emotional sense that the universe is conspiring
in their favor.
But when the absent object does not reappear or is not
forgotten, individuals
reevaluate the object’s absence and reconsider whether life
without it is okay or
they need to begin a recovery effort.
When seeing the absence as unthreatening does not appear
compelling, indi-
viduals shift to the second method of moving on without
searching: accepting a
sense that the self is powerless to retrieve the object as a
safeguard against a sense
of self enmeshed in a struggle whose outcome is uncertain.
Sensing one’s impo-
tence in the face of possibly surmountable obstacles feels
humbling but also
freeing compared to the imagined alternative of a self mired in a
difficult recov-
ery effort with no guaranteed exit strategy.
People discover the impotent self as an attractive identity
project through
cost-benefit analysis, either reflectively or through a gut
feeling. They weigh the
value of the object against the imagined effort that searching for
it requires.
Sometimes this calculation depends on their schedule, whether
they have time
to suspend belief in its unrecoverability and check things out.
For instance,
when Pedro, a 24-year-old living in Boston and working for an
educational non-
profit, was out running, he noticed his watch was missing and
momentarily ran

in place as he considered its value and the cost of a recovery
effort. In the end,
he chose to search for it. “I check my watch . . . to see how I’m
doing . . . and
it’s not there. Fuck! I think back . . . that must have been the
sound I heard. Shit,
now I’m going to be late for my date, I’ve got to run all the way
back to where
it fell . . . and it’s a nice watch, sitting right there on the
sidewalk. I’d be lucky if
it was still there. After moping for about 10 seconds, I turn
around and run
back.”
Through other calculations, the loss emerges as such an
unwanted burden that
people immediately try to forget about it, angling their whole
disposition against
making any effort to recover it. When Hassan, a 25-year-old
Brooklyn filmmaker,
discovered that his half-rimmed glasses were missing, he was
straining to find his
iPod, cell phone, and cigarettes—what he calls his “various
metro-centricities”—
in the diminished light of a setting sun. When he realized that
his glasses were
missing, he instantly deduced what likely happened to them. “I
had a lot of walk-

ing ahead of me, as I was walking from Chelsea to union
Square. I was feeling
particularly good, as I had just dropped off a movie I’d been
working on to be
sent to Sundance. I stopped at a crosswalk and took off my
blazer and slung it
over my canvas shoulder bag. The top end of the jacket was
hanging upside-
down, behind me, over the bag. It was in the following 10
minutes of walking that
I must have lost my glasses.” Though Hassan knew he could
return to that loca-
tion, he was not motivated to do so. “I had some time to kill.
But I took it more
as a sign that perhaps it was never meant to be. I could just
picture myself, my
head down as I walked, retracing my steps, scanning the ground
through crowds
of rush-hour on-foot commuters, bumping into grumpy, self-
righteous suits. And
then either (A) not finding them, or, even worse, (B) finding
them broken. No
thanks. So I went to union Square and ate some Thai.” For
Hassan, resigning
himself to a life without his glasses felt easy. He noted that,
having found them
just recently after they had been missing for four years, the loss
seemed less a
chance occurrence and more the fate of those particular glasses.
From his point
of view, he’s simply not meant to have them.
While some draw on their troubling history with the current and
other lost
objects, others sense a host of circumstances pacifying their
motivation to search.

When Amy, a 25-year-old teacher living in Boston, realized she
had dropped her
keys, “it was later in the evening and I had no energy to make
the 20-minute and
two big hills bike trip back in the dark to search out the keys
along my route. I
actually had duplicates of my important keys, which made
things easier. This was
probably the reason I didn’t ever go back to search the route for
my keys. I fig-
ured if they were there, I probably wouldn’t see them, being
under a car along
the road or they were already crushed by city traffic.” In
deciding not to try to
recover a mislaid object, some people are convinced that any
effort to retrieve it
would be futile, pacified not by the insignificance of the item
but rather by the
opposite. Nick, a 26-year-old business consultant living in San
Francisco, dropped
his wallet during the “annual Bay to Breakers event, at which
thousands of people
run or walk a designated route in San Francisco from one body
of water to
another. I recognized that any one of thousands of people could
have found my
wallet, so it didn’t seem useful to do a physical search of the
park route.” By cast-
ing the lost object as unrecoverable, individuals continue on
their path.
Individuals who move on after losing an object without
searching may either
evade a sense of a threatening absence by seeing the missing
possession as likely
to return on its own or embrace a sense of their own impotence

to recover it. But
if they are unable to sidestep their loss, individuals may invest
in a search effort.
Moving on by recovering the lost object
There is no guarantee that finding the lost object will bring
immediate closure.
Individuals must transcend the experience of loss for the
object’s recovery to
move them on. They must believe that the thing that has
returned is essentially
the same thing that disappeared, despite recovering it from what
they perceive
to be polluted hands or in a different working order. They must
believe that the
loss was somewhat of a fluke and they are not at an ongoing
risk of losing the
object again because of its extreme delicacy. They cannot
remain baffled by the
mysterious route through which it ended up in a particular
location or passed
through someone else’s hands. They must also overcome any
sense of embarrass-
ment about not recovering it sooner, or overlooking what in
hindsight appear as
tell-tale signs of its now-obvious hiding place.

Individuals reach a firm resolution through recovery when the
object is recov-
ered from a location that suggests it was reasonably mislaid and
reasonably not
looked for there, even when the initial vanishing was baffling.
When JJ, a per-
sonal chef in her 40s living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lost
two rings, the
mysterious circumstances overwhelmed her. “I was absolutely
confident that I
had put them where I always do. Not having done that has
shaken me horribly. I
feel completely distracted and crazy. I wander from room to
room in our tiny
apartment, looking over and over again in places I have looked
so many times
before.” When she happened upon the rings by chance some
days later, the
recovery provided the clues she needed to defuse her anxiety.
Like the abrupt
resolution to an ancient Greek tragedy, the thing plays the part
of deus ex
machina, resolving the otherwise inexplicable problem with its
sudden reemer-
gence. She reported,
I have a few aprons, which live on a hook in the kitchen. I
checked the pockets over and
over in my search to find my rings, but yesterday when I was
straightening up a cup-
board I found one that had been misplaced with my dish towels,
which I use all the time.
In grabbing at them, usually in a hurry to get at something hot,
or to wipe my hands and
keep cooking, this wandering apron had been pushed to the very
back of the bunch.

When I found it yesterday I hung it back on its hook. Later
when I was making dinner
I grabbed for an apron and it was at the top of the pile. While I
was doing all of my
evening tasks I heard something in the pocket. I reached in,
thinking “maybe . . . ?” but
sure I was going to pull out two dimes, or buttons, or anything
but my rings, as I had so
many times before. And then there they were, in my hand, and I
had to look at them for
a good 15 seconds to be sure.
In other cases, rather than defusing inexplicable details of its
vanishing, the
successful recovery unearths them, transforming the loss of the
object into a loss
of reasonable expectations. When Crystal, a mother in her early
40s living in
Washington, D.C., lost her wallet, for several days she scoured
all the places she
thought it could be, but when “six little skateboard dudes”
showed up at her
house with the soggy wallet she was baffled. The missing
details gnawed at her as
she tried to fashion a reasonable explanation.
I asked the boys where they found my wallet and they said “near
the sewer across the

street.” Apparently one of the boys lodged his skateboard in the
sewer and while getting
it out he noticed my wallet lying in a puddle of water. Right
across the street from my
house? How did it get there? I told them where I had thought I
lost it, which was several
miles away, and they couldn’t believe where they found it
either. The location where it
was found raised more questions than answers. Had I lost it in
the driveway? If so, how
did it get across the street and down a ways? I recalled the
recent forecast, thinking, it
hadn’t rained recently. I thought maybe the person who found it
came by my house but
saw me at home and didn’t want to get in trouble for taking the
$100 so they threw it
across the street, thinking that would be good enough for me to
find it. . . . I still want
to know the full story of where my wallet had been. As if it had
been on an adventure
without me and I was entitled to know every detail. The wallet
had a life of its own.
These puzzling recoveries compel individuals to hunt down
explanations that
abide by the laws of physics that do not allow things to
disappear and reappear
willy-nilly.
If it is not mysterious forces and their baffling reflections of
self that recoveries
alternately pacify and excite, recoveries regularly evoke
reflections of self as care-
less or otherwise incompetent that must be dealt with in moving
on. When indi-
viduals recover a lost possession from a place they have already

looked or know
they should have looked, resolution comes by dealing with these
apparent short-
comings in their investigative measures. When Nicki, a 24-year-
old social worker
living in Toronto, lost her wallet somewhere in the city, she
searched exhaustively
but failed to recover it. In a last-ditch effort, she called the
local transportation
authority’s lost-and-found office, which informed her that it had
been turned in
several days earlier. “It is difficult to describe the mix of
emotions I felt then, but
it was a mix of relief, joy, and embarrassment that I hadn’t just
called that number
in the first place.”
A successful recovery also fails to grant an immediate sense of
resolution when
individuals perceive themselves as having cried wolf. When
individuals get others
involved in recovering a lost object and then they themselves
find it somewhere
obvious, resolution comes by dealing with how they suspect
others will see them
in light of the recovery. After Randi, a 25-year-old living in San
Diego, lost her
driver’s license—or “drinking permit,” as she calls it—and
ransacked her whole
house, she came up empty-handed and decided to make the
dreaded trip to the
DMV for a replacement. After expressing her irritation with the
ordeal to her
housemates and asking them to check a few places for her, she
stumbled onto the
card in what seemed an obvious location. “There it was, sitting

right underneath
[my] jeans. I was happy and irritated. I was going to the DMV
and everyone knew
it. I was half tempted to tell them I went anyway. But that
seemed like too much
effort and I just explained that I’m mildly retarded and it was
exactly where I had
thought it had been.”
While individuals are cooling out unsavory reflections of self as
they search for
an object, they must also resist other lines of closure. Finding
closure through
recovery means doing whatever it takes to maintain the belief
that success is pos-
sible and repressing the impulse to give up. In some cases, that
means resisting
getting a replacement because that seems like an admission of
defeat. When
Nicholas, a 24-year-old writer and musician living in San
Francisco, lost his spiral
notebook full of creative ideas for stories and songs, he reports,
“I did no writing
for the entire week. I had nothing to write in. I couldn’t find the
strength to buy
a new notebook because that would mean admitting the old ones
were truly lost.

If I started a new one now, I’d have to commit to it, and I
wasn’t ready for that
because I hadn’t finished the old ones. So I tried to busy myself
with other work
and pretend it didn’t matter, but the loss was slowly sinking in.
I refused to
believe yet that they were gone for good.”
A successful recovery of the serendipitous sort may fail to bring
individuals to
closure, not because of its unsettling revelations, but because
they have already
found some kind of peace with the object’s absence. For
instance, after
Emmanuel, a 27-year-old web developer living in Denver, lost a
journal, he
slowly made peace with its absence and then, several years
later, happened upon
it in his martial arts studio. “It was a very nice thing to find my
[journal] finally,
but I had spent the last couple of years starting a new one and
trying to redo all
of the writing I had lost, that it didn’t make such an impact to
find it again. It was
fun to flip through and review my old writing, but that was
about it.” He
expressed surprise and happiness about its return, but conceded
that he was not
freed from any unresolved feelings.
When individuals move toward closure after recovering a lost
object, they
work to control the forces that threaten to keep them in a state
of loss. But when
recovery does not seem immediately forthcoming, individuals
may find a kind of

closure through failure. As with successful recoveries,
individuals must overcome
a set of recurring challenges to self for failure to take them back
“home.”
Moving on by abandoning a failed search
While there is no guarantee that a successful recovery will
automatically bring
a sense of closure to individuals who have lost something, with
the right condi-
tions in place an unsuccessful effort will. People recurrently
move toward closure
without having found a lost object by developing a sense that
they have put in a
“good effort,” that they have done what any reasonable person
could do in such
a situation and do not have to bear the burden of a guilty
conscience. As the
unsuccessful search can theoretically go on as long as someone
lives, at some
point the strategy to find the thing turns into a strategy for
getting over the effort
to find the thing. As all search projects start a narrative thread
that implies an
ending, individuals sense that doing something to try to find the
thing prepares
them to give up trying to find it.
Through such resolution-producing, yet failed recovery work,
individuals dis-
cover a reflection of themselves as careful and thorough, as
people who, though
they occasionally lose something, are still deserving of nice
things. When
Michael, a 31-year-old Broadway actor living in New York

City, lost his engage-
ment ring after he “carelessly” placed it in a shoe before taking
the field at a
softball game, he felt “very guilty” for losing such a “treasured
item.” After thor-
oughly, but unsuccessfully, searching the dugout and field with
a metal detector
purchased from Radio Shack the next day, he felt a sense of
resolution, but his
fiancée, Eva, did not. “Eventually we decided to quit [looking],
convinced that
we’d done everything we could. If there was a ring there still
we would have
found it. I felt a sense of closure after the extensive search, but
Eva began to get
upset. She’d really thought that we’d find it with the metal
detector and was now
mad at me for being careless with the ring. There were
definitely better places to
store it than a shoe, and it probably would have been just fine
on my finger
anyway.”
Though the “good effort” path to resolution is not something
individuals regu-
larly cite as a strategy guiding their treatment of a loss, in some
search situations

people know full well that it will let them sleep at night. Anna,
a 28-year-old
graduate student at Emory university, reported, “I figured if the
hat was gone, I
could deal with it if I knew that we checked every possible
place I had been that
night.”
The sense of having put in a “good effort” also emerges when a
search effort
must end prematurely because of what individuals sense to be
legitimate obsta-
cles. For instance, when individuals imagine that the lost object
could be almost
anywhere and any effort appears futile, they may cite needle-in-
a-haystack cir-
cumstances as an insurmountable obstacle that effectively
excuses them from
further effort. Vicky, a 27-year-old manager at a company in
New York City,
conveys this sentiment after coming to multiple dead ends in
her search for her
bracelet.
Clearly the bracelet is so gone. Maybe it fell off in the first
restaurant or the second,
maybe it got swept up unnoticed or maybe a waiter found it,
maybe it tumbled off while
I was walking and some passerby caught the light gleaming off
the gold and picked it up
in a most lucky turn of events for him, maybe it fell off into the
subway tracks. . . . The
possibilities are endless, far too endless, and after a week of
contemplating every con-
ceivable way I could have lost it, as though I could at least
reconstruct the exact moment

of loss, I am done.
While some, like Vicky, find closure through what they
perceive to be insur-
mountable practical obstacles to a search, others end
unsuccessful searches and
relinquish the possibility of recovery to leave an unsettling
image of self behind.
While looking around the dance floor of a crowded nightclub,
Andrea, a 21-year-
old art student in New York City, worried about what others
thought of her as she
and several others tried to track down her errant cell phone.
[My friend] had gone the extra mile: she’d recruited the help of
the bouncer. They were
busy bobbing between the crowd, peeking around the high-heels
and trainers with his
trusty mini-torch. That made me incredibly embarrassed. . . .
Losing my cell phone was
one thing, but looking like “that girl” is another. You know that
girl. You don’t want to be
that girl. That drunken, idiot who loses her cell phone in a bar. .
. . But I didn’t say any-
thing besides “thank you very much anyway” when they
returned empty-handed.
Andrea’s embarrassment pushed her toward closure by

forbidding her from
searching further for her cell phone.
While catching a reflection of themselves as “uncool” prompts
some to aban-
don their search, others end their effort by catching an
unsettling reflection of
themselves when they meet people with relative expertise in lost
property. A few
days after Lizzie, a 41-year-old journalist living in Santa
Barbara, lost her gold
ring “somewhere around town,” she tried the local pawn shop,
“but those guys
seemed amused that I’d think I could find my ring there. One
said if my ring was
stolen, it was in Mexico getting new documents and that the
gold had probably
been reduced down by now. I felt a little naive in front of those
guys at the
thought that I could just walk in there and find it.”
Beyond the social pressures to give up, search efforts also come
to an excusa-
ble end when people run into access issues deriving from the
seemingly circui-
tous lost and found procedures of a place of business or public
institution. Rather
than feeling guilt for stopping a search prematurely, losing
parties feel frustrated
by a sense of impotence in the face of greater powers. For
instance, when Javier,
a student at the New School, believed he had left his violin on a
commuter train,
he encountered difficulty with the Metropolitan Transit
Authority’s (MTA’s) lost-
and-found office. “I call MTA to see what their policies are

about lost and found
items. After trying the number many times over . . . I manage to
get hold of
someone only to discover that you must wait 7 to 10 business
days before you
should call them. They do not get daily updates. As absurd as
this seems I could
do nothing short of traveling from station to station along the
route asking every-
one in the ticket booths if something had been returned.”
While Javier moved toward closure after hitting a seemingly
insuperable
bureaucratic obstacle, others bring their recovery efforts to an
excusable, though
begrudging, end when they uncover signs that the item was
stolen and is virtually
irretrievable. Faced with this conviction, individuals may give
up. Pat, a 48-year-
old freelance graphic artist living in Berkeley, reconstructed
how she had lost a
piece of jewelry: “After I dropped off my daughter I stopped at
a gas station . . .
and got out of the car forgetting the ring on its chain was on my
lap. That is how
it happened. The ring simply fell off my lap when I got out of
the car. I am pretty
sure I will never see that ring again. I noticed at that time that
on the ground at
the gas station was a little tiny zip-lock bag used for the
distribution of metham-
phetamine or crack cocaine. I just know that some junkie took
my ring.”
Convinced that any recovery attempt was hopeless, Pat treated
the object as
stolen.

In addition to ending a search because of a sense of impotence
and to avoid
disconcerting reflections of self, individuals stop searching
because they do not
want the loss to burden those around them. When Mike, a 33-
year-old pastor at
Valley Christian Fellowship in Northern California, lost the
receipt to his church’s
projector, he enlisted his staff to help locate it so they could
take a tax write-off.
“They were all completely invested for an hour. And I could’ve
looked for another
hour or two easily but I quit because I didn’t want the staff
bothered by it
anymore. If I was looking, I know they would have demanded to
help. But . . . I
didn’t want to burden them with it.”
When individuals reach a sense of closure through a failed
search effort, they
often see the lost object as having purely sentimental value,
something that can-
not be replaced. But when individuals reach a sense of failure
without a sense of
resolution, they often try to get on with life by replacing it.

Moving on by replacing the thing
Replacing a lost item is no guarantee that individuals will
overcome the bur-
dens of having lost it. If they turn to a replacement too early,
individuals feel
wasteful, as if they are just throwing one thing away and
picking up another. If
they replace something with what turns out to be an inadequate
substitute, the
loss continues to bother them. By trying to replace something
that has irreplace-
able value, individuals sense the ineffectiveness of their efforts.
When Rob, an American software engineer on a business trip in
London, lost
the wedding ring he had worn for 20 years, he put in an
exhaustive search before
deciding to replace it with an exact replica made by a jeweler in
London. But the
replacement never quite felt right, and he continued to make
phone inquiries to
lost-and-found offices around London. He noted, “I wear that
one now, but it is
not the same. I still make efforts, no matter how futile, to find
it.” Jackie, a realtor
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, replaced her nearly 30-year-old
charm bracelet,
hoping that it would assuage her feelings of loss. But after
duplicating some of
the original charms, she begrudgingly conceded that the
“meaning is not there.”
For some, the shortcomings of the replacement will spur another
round of
searching.

While some discover that their lost objects have irreplaceable
value by actually
replacing them and then feeling the inadequacies of the
substitutes, others sense
right away that the lost object cannot be satisfactorily replaced.
When Laura, an
adjunct professor of graphic design at a southern university, lost
a memory chip
from her camera filled with hundreds of “artsy” photos
documenting her and her
son’s trip through Germany and France, she scoffed at
someone’s suggestion that
she could replace them. “Someone said I could just collect some
pictures off the
Internet or gather some pictures of those who accompanied me
on the trip. But,
bottom line: they are someone else’s memories. Not mine.”
Those who replace lost objects may find that does little to
resolve a sentimen-
tal loss or to repair negative images of self derived from losing
something, espe-
cially when their competency is already suspect. When JP, a 28-
year-old aspiring
comedian living in Boston, lost his cell phone, he had difficulty
finding the humor
in the situation. Having recently told his disapproving family
that he was going to
pursue a career in comedy, he felt that telling them he had lost
his only means of
communication seemed like “evidence that I was not in fact a
creative person
trying to pursue a dream, but an immature fuck-up with
delusions of grandeur
who couldn’t keep things in his pocket.” Several days after the
loss, JP checked a

few more places and began considering a replacement. What he
found most dis-
turbing was the damage to his sense of credibility. “It seems
really strange to me,
because at the same time I recognize how inconsequential [the
loss] is. I can buy
a new phone, probably a nicer one, and try to keep in mind that
one piece of
plastic and circuits is easily replaced by another. But there’s a
nagging feeling that
by losing the phone, the status symbol, the lifeline, that I’ve
somehow taken a
step backwards from being a responsible adult.”
Chloe, a former corporate analyst in Manhattan, also knows that
a replace-
ment will not repair the damage caused by a loss that signals
incompetence. She
had just moved to Maui to “take a break from my high-pressure
work history”
when she lost her new employers’ keys. She had presented
herself to them as a
highly skilled organizer who had “a reputation for knowing
where things are, why
they are there, and where they will go next . . . and for being
supremely qualified
not only to keep track of things, but to determine if they are

really needed to
begin with.” When she had to contact her employers while they
were away and
enlist their help in finding spare keys or replacing them, she felt
humiliated about
messing up the very task that she claimed was her strong suit.
Soon Chloe
deduced why the mishap had occurred and concluded that the
problem could be
resolved only by quitting her job.
Let me tell you, I felt bitch-slapped by the great goddess
Karma. I don’t know what
offended her more, my arrogance about how far beneath me this
job is, or my lack of
concern about honesty in the reporting of my work hours. But
either way, I was severely
reprimanded. Therefore, this story has not one but two morals,
and both are horribly
clichéd. Any job worth doing is worth doing well, and honesty
is the best policy. Did I
take these morals to heart? Well, in a manner of speaking. As
far as the honesty goes, I
shorted my hours for the second week to make up for what I had
overcharged the first
week. With regard to the “any job” moral, I decided that this
was not a job worth doing,
and gave my notice well in advance of my actual date of
resignation, so as not to leave
them in the lurch. And immediately felt better about the entire
situation.
under circumstances like those JP and Chloe encountered,
replacing the lost
object cannot repair the damage caused by the loss.

For others, replacement soothes a glaring absence or restores a
taken-for-
granted and comforting intertwining of self with thing. When
Gina, an executive
of a Fortune 500 company living in New York City, lost her
ankle bracelet while
“drinking and gallivanting across the city,” feeling its absence
stirred her from
sleep and irked her for the next five days. “It was strange
getting dressed . . . put-
ting on my shoes especially, without the anklet there. . . . I
hardly ever really
noticed it, but suddenly my ankle felt very naked without it. Its
absence was so
obvious. At the jewelry store where my parents bought the
original gift I bought
a replacement . . . five days after it disappeared, which at least
got rid of that
naked ankle feeling and gave me something to fidget with in all
the odd ways I
had never consciously realized.”
Replacing a lost object works only when the replacement does
not act as a
reminder of the loss. Ryan, a 21-year-old college student living
in Minnesota, lost
his much-loved jacket. “Two days later, after giving up hope of

finding the jacket,
I ordered the exact same $150 jacket from Cabela’s, even
though it was going to
be a stress on my finances, because I knew that I enjoyed that
jacket so much that
if I were to get another of less quality and value I would always
think of the one
that I lost and how much better it was.” Individuals may move
toward closure if
the replacement puts the lost item in a less attractive light,
however. When
Marcy, a 51-year-old pediatrician living in New York City,
begrudgingly began the
process of replacing her lost camera, she found its loss much
easier to accept. “I
learned that it was an old model and was shown the new lighter,
higher-pixel
replacement. Funny that the camera I had loved which took
amazing pictures in
sunlight now seemed a bit obsolete!”
Conclusion
Despite the uniqueness of individuals’ responses to losing
personal belong-
ings, people always move on by overcoming recurring
challenges that are
intrinsic to the path they take. Sometimes moving on entails
pacifying unset-
tling feelings or sidestepping them altogether. If and when these
feelings
develop, they do so by portraying the self in a deficient light,
leaving individuals
to revive a sense of an adequate self. But what it takes to get
them back to a
more settled place is often not entirely known by individuals at

the outset.
Every loss presents itself as a kind of riddle through which
losing parties come
to see, through subsequent steps and even stumblings, a route
for getting back
to life as usual.
When first realizing a loss, individuals feel or logically deduce
whether they
must embark on a recovery effort or can calmly put their
concerns aside and back
away. When they choose to invest effort in searching, they may
learn that success
is not enough to enable them to move on. The reemergence of
the thing must be
pacifying, not a damning commentary on self. Yet
counterintuitively, failure to
recover the object may provide an escape from the burdens of
loss, provided that
individuals feel they have made a genuine effort. When all else
fails, replacement
solves the practical deficits created by the object’s sudden
absence, but leaves
one in the lurch when its powers derive from its provenance.
Each way of moving on constitutes a different way of imagining
the relation-
ship of self and thing. Moving on without the thing, whether by
sidestepping a
sense of loss entirely or through a failed search, becomes an
effort to disassociate
self from thing and reimagine an adequate life despite its
absence. Moving on
with the successfully recovered thing becomes an effort to
ignore or disarm the
continued existence of troubling forces that could cause the loss

once again.
Moving on with a replacement becomes an effort to lose oneself
once again in
the thing while pacifying a sense that the connection is
artificial. To move on from
a breach in one’s taken-for-granted grounding in the material
environment is to
play with a notion of where the self ends and the world begins.
References
Becker, Howard S. 1998. Tricks of the trade. Chicago, IL:
university of Chicago Press.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Malden,
MA: Blackwell.
Pollner, Melvin. 1974. Mundane reasoning. Philosophy of the
Social Sciences 4 (1): 35–54.
Ragin, Charles C. 1994. Constructing social research: The unity
and diversity of method. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.

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