Politics as Symbolic Action

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Politics as Symbolic Action
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Politics functions , in part, by controlling the
symbolic containers, providing MEANING to events
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Symbolic interaction is the Reality in Which we
Act
What is Democracy

• What is Government?

What is Freedom?
What is Nation Building?
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Point of View

• Not a Political Science point of view
• structure of institutions, e.g. parties,
• tactics, strategies, socialization, etc..
• Not a Sociological point of view
• statues, groups, socio-economic determinate
• Not a Psychological point of view
• motives, drives, traits, as determinate
• Rather a Symbolic/Communicative approach

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Politics as Ritual
People Symbolically involved in a common
enterprise voting, inaugurations, debates,
conventions, collective grieving

• Politics in America is the binding secular
  religion. Theodore White, Historian/Journalist

A National Campaign is better than the best
circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism (the
convention) and a couple of hangings thrown in.
It is better, even than war. H. L. Mencken
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POLITICS AS MYTHS

• The Founding Fathers
• The American Dream
• Free-enterprise
• Wisdom of the Common Man

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Kenneth Burke

• THE SYMBOL USING (SYMBOL-MAKING, SYMBOL-MISUSING)
  ANIMAL
• INVENTOR OF THE NEGATIVE (OR MORALIZED BY THE
  NEGATIVE)
• SEPARATED FROM HIS NATURAL CONDITION BY
  INSTRUMENTS OF HIS OWN MAKING
• GOADED BY THE SPIRIT OF HIERARCHY (OR MOVED BY
  THE SENSE OF ORDER)
• AND ROTTEN WITH PERFECTION
• Definition of Man in Language as Symbolic
  Action Essays on Life, Literature, and Method

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Dramatistic Perspective

• Inherent to symbolic life is tension between
  identification division.
• Identification. consubstantiation--become the
  other symbolically
• Naming - is inherently rhetorical
• Motive toward perfection, order, hierarchy
• The Negative invokes a moralistic world,
• People are Rotten with perfection Piety,
  Guilt, Redemption, Victimage, Salvation

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• What must be made absolutely clear is that
  politics is not somehow unreal or false because
  it is freighted with symbols and visualized in
  images. We cannot somehow dismiss showmanship,
  political ritual, speeches, and televised debates
  as mere politics. Politics, after all, is a
  human or social activity. Arthur Miller Bruce
  Gronbeck, 1994.