Sociology Index

 

 

 

 

 

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2011, Symbolic Interaction, Intersubjectivity, Generalized Other

Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective that stresses the way societies are created through the interactions of individuals.

Unlike both the consensus (structural functionalist) and conflict perspectives, symbolic interactionism does not stress the idea of a social system possessing structure and regularity, but focuses on the way that individuals, through their interpretations of social situations and behavioural negotiation with others, give meaning to social interaction.

George H. Mead (1863-1931), a founder of symbolic interactionism, saw interaction as creating and recreating the patterns and structures that bring society to life, but more recently there has been a tendency to argue that society has no objective reality aside from individual interaction. 

This latter view has been criticized for ignoring the role of culture and social structure in giving shape, direction and meaning to social interaction.

Symbolic Interactionism
Author: Dawn Del Carlo - introchem.chem.okstate.edu
Abstract: Originally conceived of by Herbert Blumer, symbolic interactionism is a theoretical and methodological perspective that seeks to understand the socially constructed meaning behind human behavior and interaction.  Grounded within the tenets of social psychology, it can be used as a framework to shape educational research in the sciences.  A brief history of symbolic interaction’s development, a description of its assumptions and methods, and its direct applicability to science education research including examples of published research will be discussed. 

Ken Plummer, "Symbolic Interactionism in the Twentieth Century," Chap. 8 in B. Turner, ed., Blackwell Companion to Social Theory

Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Prentice-Hall, 1969)

 

The Deviant Mystique : Involvements, Realities, and Regulation
Book by Robert Prus, Scott Grills. Adopting a symbolic interactionist perspective and building extensively on the ethnographic research tradition, this book analyzes the mystique that often accompanies deviance by examining deviance as an ongoing feature of community life. Because deviance is approached in nonprescriptive ways, as a product of community interchange, the emphasis here is on the ways in which deviance is defined, engaged, and regulated.

 

Attribution and Symbolic Interaction: An Impasse at the Generalized Other 
George V. Zito, Syracuse University, 500 University Place, Syracuse, New York 13210. 
Jerry Jacobs, Syracuse University, Human Relations, Vol. 32, No. 7, 571-578 (1979)
Attribution theory and symbolic interactionism have developed independently of each another, although both are concerned with the processes employed by ordinary people to make sense of their everyday world. It was inevitable that developments in the one should at last collide with certain well-established tenets of the other. Recent developments in attribution theory respecting differential attributions by Ego of the causes of his own and Alter's behaviors seem to collide with Mead's notion of the Generalized Other. The authors seek to define the current impasse, which they see as further confounding the problem of intersubjectivity.

 

The conflict perspective, symbolic interactionism, and the status characteristics hypothesis
Author: Triplett, Ruth - ingentaconnect.com
Abstract: Though recent theorists acknowledge the dual theoretical foundation of the labeling perspective, they limit their focus in discussions of the status characteristics hypothesis of labeling to the influence of the conflict perspective, to the relative neglect of symbolic interactionism. In view of the acknowledged influence of the conflict perspective on the status characteristics hypothesis, this paper demonstrates the importance of symbolic interactionism to the status characteristics hypothesis in three ways: by demonstrating the limits of the conflict perspective in predicting variations in reaction, especially at the level of informal reaction; by demonstrating the contribution of symbolic interactionism; and by empirically testing hypotheses derived from the theoretical work concerning the determinants of parents' reactions that label their children delinquent. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the labeling perspective.

 

 

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