Introducing to Symbolic Interactionism

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Introducing to Symbolic Interactionism

• ERSH 7400
• Kathy Roulston
• The University of Georgia

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Disciplinary roots

• American pragmatism
• Social psychology
• Symbolic interactionism
• explores the understandings abroad in culture as
  the meaningful matrix that guides our lives
  (Crotty, 1998, p.71)

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Symbolic interactionism

• A distinctive style of sociological reasoning and
  methodology that has evolved in and about the
  Department of Sociology at the University of
  Chicago in the 1920s 1930s
• Research
• Tentative
• Empirical
• Responsive to meaning

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• Howard Becker its not an easy position to
  understandpartly, I think, because (like Zen)
  its so simple.
• Herbert Blumer The symbolic interactionist
  approach rests upon the premise that human action
  takes place always in a situation that confronts
  the actor and that the actor acts on the basis of
  defining this situation that confronts him.

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Scholars

• Herbert Mead (1863-1931) social psychologist
• Herbert Blumer (1900-1986)
• (Mead student)
• Erving Goffman
• Chicago School
• Howard Becker
• Glaser Strauss

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Central premises (Blumer)

• Humans act toward things on the basis of meanings
  these things have for them
• Meaning of such things is derived from social
  interactions of one with others
• Meanings are handled/ modified through an
  interpretive process used by one in dealing with
  things he/she encounters

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Assumptions

• People are unique creatures because of their
  ability to use symbols
• People become distinctively human through their
  interaction
• People are conscious and self-reflexive beings
  who actively shape their own behavior
• People are purposive creatures who act in and
  toward situations.

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Assumptions

• Human society consists of people engaging in
  symbolic interaction
• To understand peoples social acts, we need to
  use methods that enable us to discern the
  meanings they attribute to these acts (Sandstrom,
  Martin, Fine, 2001)

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• A person is a personality because he belongs to a
  community, because he takes over the institution
  of that community into his own conduct
• The whole (society) is prior to the part (the
  individual).
• (George Herbert Mead)

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Focus

• Study the functional relationship between how we
  see ourselves (self-definition), how we see
  others (interpersonal perceptions) and how we
  think others see us.
• To understand social reality and society from the
  perspective of the actors who interpret their
  world through and in social interaction.
• To explain the set of understandings symbols
  that give meaning to peoples interactions.

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What was new?

• Broke away from traditional efforts to construct
  mock-scientific theory and method to observe
  social life as it occurs, observe people as they
  go about their affairs.
• Aimed to provide fuller depictions of actual
  conducts in real circumstances.
• Critique of quantitative methods as inappropriate
  to capture the nature of social life.

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Methodologies

• Ethnography
• Grounded theory (Glaser Strauss)

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Methods

• Participant and non participant observation
• Interviews

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Field work

• Not to be reduced to a strict method or recipe
• Role of field researcher loosely defined and open
  ended
• Research as exploratory
• View sympathetic to those under study
• Tradition of urban anthropologies
• Occupational studies

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Central questions

• What common set of symbols and understandings
  have emerged to give meaning to peoples
  interactions?
• Contributions
• Self identity theory
• Emotions
• Social coordination
• Social construction (e.g. Deviance social
  problems)
• Culture art
• Organizations collective action

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Future directions

• Incorporation of perspectives from
• Feminist theory
• Critical theory
• Postmodern theory

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Critiques

• We cant see through others eyes.
• Actors put forward what they wish (e.g. tell
  you what you want to hear)
• Has neglected topics such as social structures,
  institutions, power ideology