Symbolic

Interactionism
BEYOND LOGICAL POSITIVISM?
So what comes to your Mind?
Meanings?
How does one execute a robbery?
 SYMBOLIC INTERACTION PERSPECTIVE
 Symbolic meaning and
social roles are learned
Individual
through interaction with
others.
 Societies consist of many
Society small theaters where
people act out various
social roles.
 Change occurs when
actors improvise on the
basic script.
MEAD’S DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES (I and ME)
 Play Stage (3 to 5 years)
 Children learn the use of language and other symbols; Children begin to take the
roles of other specific persons (e.g. mom, dad, etc.); earning the nature of roles
begins here
 Game Stage (early school years)
 Children develop an understanding of their personal role as it relates to the role(s)
of others; This allows for the child to begin to understand of the demands and
expectations of the larger society
 Generalized Other Stage
 The child becomes aware of the demands and expectation of society as a whole;
Social norms, expected and accepted behaviors in the process of social interaction
are internalized
Symbolic Interactionism
 Beyond the dominant positivist top-down perspectives
 How society is created and maintained through repeated interactions among
individuals.
 Individual as agentic, autonomous, and integral in creating their social world
 Interpretation of subjective viewpoints and how individuals make sense of their
world from their unique perspective.
 Not about objective structure but about meaning
 The interaction occurs once the meaning of something has become identified.
 Key Theorists – Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer (Chicago), Manford Kuhn
(Iowa) and Sheldon Stryker (Indiana School)
Basic Tenets
 (1) individuals act based on the meanings objects have for them;
 (2) interaction occurs within a particular social and cultural
context in which physical and social objects (persons), as well as
situations, must be defined or categorized based on individual
meanings;
 (3) meanings emerge from interactions with other individuals and
with society; and
 (4) meanings are continuously created and recreated through
interpreting processes during interaction with others.
The Chicago School
 Deriving from Meads Social Behaviorism
 Self emerges from an interactive process of joint action
 The study of human behavior must begin with human association
(Blumer)
 ‘The peculiar and distinctive character of interaction as it takes place
between human beings’ (Blumer, 1962: 179)
 Social Institutions as Social Habits that occur within specific Situations
 No meaning inherent in people of objects – actors place meanings
 Social behavior requires an interpretive perspective that examines
how behavior is changing, unpredictable, and unique to each and
every social encounter.
The Chicago School

 Study the forms of action that participants do together in units.

 Social phenomena centers on the notion of independent action:
human society is distinctive because of the capacity of each
member to act independently
 Automonous Individual: Understands the agent’s role in society as
free and flexible; an individual reacts on his or her own accord and
without structural influence.
In Brief – Chicago School
 (1) human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that
the things have for them;
 (2) the meaning of things is derived from, or arises out of, the social
interaction that one has with others;
 (3) meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive
process used by a person in dealing with the things they encounter.
 Against Logical Empiricism; Examine the social setting and Each
distinct interaction directly
 Researcher takes the standpoint of actor. (Good way to study
modernity)
Iowa School – Manford Kuhn

 Rigorous scientific test of symbolic interactionist principles

 Using Positivist Methods - cybernetic perspective that emphasizes
intentionality, temporality, and self-correction  To be tested in
dyads, triads, and small groups as these are central.
 Don’t be RELATIVE  You should come up with ABSTRACT
LAWS OF BEHAVIOUR
 Contradicts BLUMER Methodologically
 TWENTY STATEMENT TEST
Indiana School – Sheldon STRYKER
 Symbolic Interactionist Could and Should be tested using both
Qualitative and Quantitative methods
 Social roles as emerging from a reciprocal influence of net- works or
patterns of relationships in interactions as they are shaped by various
levels of social structures
 Roles may be analysed – as perdictors of future
 Individual takes symbolic cues (from past), Attitudes of Others, ,
Normative expectations of status  works out potential line of action
 Individual   Social Structure: Reflexive actions becomes internalised
expectation for behaviour as part of self and becomes your IDENTITY
(IF I DO THIS I AM A MAN)
 Dramaturgical approach ERVING
GOFFMAN (1922–1982)
█ People seen as theatrical performers
– Every individual has multiple roles and change scripts as social
setting call for it
– It generally seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream
sociological approaches
– In dramaturgical sociology it is argued that the elements of
human interactions are dependent upon time, place, and
audience.
Some Key Contributions
 Glaser and Strauss (Study of Hospitals)  social interactions vary
by structure, awareness of members, and tactics of maintaining
awareness/unawareness. For example, nurses in hospitals often must
interact with patients who are terminal but unaware of the severity
of their condition.
 Self and Political Ideology (BROOKS) – how self relates with right-
wing or left-wing ideologies.
 Goffman- Study of Psychiatric Hospitals  study of Spoiled
Identities.
 Cultural Studies: Denzin on Alcoholic Self to alcoholic recovery.
So Where are WE?

 From Structural Functionalism to Conflict to Individual Meanings –

A case for Multiple Paradigms in Sociology or would you choose
one over another?