Symbolic Interactionism: The Basics (Sociology) 162273498X, 9781622734986

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SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM THE BASICS Charles Quist-Adade Kwantlean Polytechnic University Surrey, BC, Canada

Series in Sociology

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Table of Contents vii

Preface

ix

Introduction Chapter One:

Chapter Two:

Society and the Social Animal What is Society?

1 1

We are Social Animals

2

We Create that which Creates Us: The Dialectic of the Individual and Society

5

The Individual and Society: Two Perspectives and Two Levels of Analyses

6

The Two Levels of Analyses

7

From Macrosociology to Microsociology

9

From Decoupling to Coupling: Micro-Macro Nexus

12

Chapter Summary

14

Symbolic Interactionism: A Brief Introduction What Symbolic Interactionism? Many Definitions, One Concept

17 20

Ritzer’s Seven Principles of Symbolic Interactionism

23

Symbols, Language, Thought, and Mind

23

Thought

24

The Mind

24

Synopsis

25

Symbolic Interactionism: Images, Histories, and Themes

26

Symbolic Interactionism as aScion of Sociological Social Psychology

29

Chapter Three:

Chapter Four:

The Psychology in Sociology: Tracing the Roots of Sociological Social Psychology

31

The Sociological Perspective

41

The Spectrum of Social Psychology

42

Psychological Social Psychology

43

Chapter Summary

44

The Sociological Perspective

47

Philosophical Sources and Intellectual Roots of Symbolic Interactionism Philosophical Sources

49 49

Pragmatism

50

John Dewey’s Pragmatism

50

William James’ Typology of Selves

51

Behaviorism

52

Darwinism

53

Intellectual Roots of SI

54

Max Weber: The Foremost Forerunners of Interactionism

54

Simmel’s Methodological Relationism

56

Levels of Concerns

58

Primary Concerns, Interests, and Contributions

59

Group Size and Interaction

59

Objective Culture

60

The Philosophy of Money

61

Chapter Summary

61

George Herbert Mead “The Father” of Symbolic Interactionism Mead as a Behaviorist

67 68

Mead as a Pragmatist

69

Mead as a Darwinist

71

Mead as a Social Behaviorist

73

Mead on Language

77

The Social Component of Gestures

81

Chapter Five:

Chapter Six:

Chapter Seven:

Chapter Eight:

Chapter Nine:

Mead’s Gesture Versus Wundt’s Gesture

82

Mead and Defining Meaning

83

Mead on the Mind and the Self

87

The Question of Self as an Object

89

The Self as a Social Self

90

Generalized Other

92

The Stages of the Development of the Self

93

The “I” and the “Me” Component of the Self

94

Chapter Summary

97

Herbert Blumer and Symbolic Interactionism Defining Symbolic Interactionism

101 101

Root Images

105

The Nature of Human Group Life

105

Nature of Social Interaction

106

Nature of Objects

107

Humans as Acting Organisms

109

Uniqueness of the Nature of Human Action

110

Interlinkage of Action

111

Conclusions

113

Chapter summary

113

Charles Horton Cooley’s Looking Glass Self The Looking Glass-Self

115 116

Chapter Summary

119

Erving Goffman and Impression Management Chapter Summary

121 124

Phenomenology Alfred Schultz’s Social phenomenology

127 130

Chapter Summary

131

Ethnomethodology Doing ethnomethodology

133 134

Chapter summary

137

Chapter Ten:

Rational Choice Theory Exchange Theory/Theories of Rational Choice

139 139

Rational Choice and Individual Behaviour: Homans's Elementary Forms of Social Behaviour

142

The Meaning of Rational Choice

143

Selecting Action Alternatives

143

Chapter summary

144

Chapter Eleven: Tying the loose ends Society, Self and Mind

147 149

Critique of Symbolic Interactionism: The Good, the Not So Good and the In-between

150

Neglect of Larger Structures

151

Extent of Structural Constraints

151

Theory of the Duality of Structure and Agency

152

Anthony Giddens’ Structuration

154

Refusing to Die

157

From Social Reality Construction to Critical Constructionism

157

Corporate crime and street crime

163

The Postmodern Turn of Symbolic Interactionism

165

Postmodernism emerged as an antithesis to the Enlightenment project

166

Postmodernism

167

Postmodernity and Postmodernism

167

Critique of Postmodernism

176

Bibliography

179

Endnotes

189

Index

191

Preface Symbolic Interactionism is Dead, Long Live Symbolic Interactionism! As Ken Plummer (2014) has noted, the symbolic interactionism paradigm remains one of the most endurable social theories of the twentieth century. He echoes the same optimism of Stryker (1987) who writes about the vitalization of symbolic interactionism. But not long ago, other social scientists sounded the death knell and mourned the “sad demise” and the “mysterious disappearance” of the paradigm, with others describing it as moribund and “graying” (Saxton, 1989). Yet, these declarations and acknowledgments, while pointing to the usual drill most paradigms go through on their historical paths, fail to capture in full the twists and turns, the ebbs and flows, the fortunes and misfortunes of a paradigm that has simply refused to die. In fact, in recent times, some have begun to celebrate the “glorious triumph of symbolic interactionism” (Fine, 1993). Some have described it as “the harbinger of postmodern social theory.” (Plummer, 2014) I agree with the optimists. Symbolic Interaction is a paradigm that has simply refused to give up the ghost. This fact is borne out of the growing corps of social scientists who are actively and tirelessly championing the theory with their own journals, conferences, websites and professional organization (The Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction). Plummer (2014) has observed that other promoters of the paradigm are moving through much of the social theory in disguised “post Blumerian” forms (cf. Denzin, 1992: xiv; Fine, 1990). This book echoes the optimism of both Plummer and Stryker. It traces the checkered history of Symbolic Interactionism from its social philosophical beginnings to its meandering ways through psychology and sociology to its postmodernist turn.

Introduction This book is a survey of Symbolic Interaction. In thirteen short chapters, it traces the history, the social philosophical roots, the founders, “movers and shakers” and evolution of the theory. Symbolic Interactionism: The Basics takes the reader along the exciting, but a tortuous journey of the theory and explores both the meta-theoretical and mini-theoretical roots and branches of the theory. Symbolic interactionism or sociological social psychology traces its roots to the works of United States sociologists George Hebert Mead, Charles Horton Cooley, and Herbert Blumer, and a Canadian sociologist, Erving Goffman; Other influences are Harold Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodology and Austrian-American Alfred Schultz’s study of Phenomenology. Symbolic Interactionism: Basics explores the philosophical sources of symbolic interactionism, including pragmatism, social behaviorism, and neoHegelianism. The intellectual origins of symbolic interactions can be attributed to the works of William James, George Simmel, John Dewey, Max Weber, and George Herbert Mead. Mead is believed to be the founder of the theory, although he did not publish any academic work on the paradigm. The book highlights the works of the intellectual heirs of symbolic interactionism— Herbert Blumer, Mead’s former student, who was instrumental in publishing the lectures his former professor posthumously with the title Symbolic Interactionism, Erving Goffman and Robert Park. Symbolic Interactionism (SI) places a premium on human agency and creativity. In doing so, it underscores how individuals create and recreate their social worlds through the use and manipulation of symbols in a joint interaction with co-social actors in a dynamic and infinite fashion. According to the Oxford Dictionary, “Symbolic interactionism grew out of the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism in the late 19th century, especially as elaborated by William James, John Dewey, and Charles S. Peirce.” Famed founder of SI, George Herbert Mead is credited with forging a bridge between the pragmatic tradition and sociology. Other founders who cemented the SI tradition into sociology were Charles Horton Cooley and William Isaac Thomas. However, most sociologists agree that the most important exponent of SI was Herbert Blumer, who coined the perspective’s label in 1937 in his book, Symbolic Interactionism. SI serves as a counterpoise to the “grand old theories” of functionalism and conflict, proposing a balance in our understanding of social life. SI seeks to

x

Introduction

counter the tendency of functionalist and conflict theorists that humans are mere puppets of powerful social structures and institutions, such as norms, ideologies, traditions, the economy, polity, family, media, etc. Instead, SI quite cogently contends that humans are freely acting agents, who create that which creates them. This dialectical approach provides a nuanced explanation of social life, by juxtaposing human agency and social institutions. In 1963 Peter Berger wrote in Invitation to Sociology, “It can be said that the first wisdom of sociology is this - things are not what they seem.” Everyone has a perspective, a worldview, a common sense notion of how human society operates. Yet Berger goes on to say that, “Social reality turns out to have many layers of meaning. The discovery of each new layer changes the perception of the whole.” (23) The main objective of the book is to examine those various layers of meaning and reality. While doing so, it examines the structural aspects of human society and the dynamic processes that construct and shape it [society]that most often go unnoticed by the individual, yet have an enormous influence on the life chances, lifestyle, and opportunities available to people. People, in turn, make choices, take advantage of opportunities (or make opportunities) and influence changes in society. This examination will, hopefully, help you better understand the forces that shape your own life and how you shape the lives of those around you and the society in which you live. Thus, the book critically examines how people relate to, shape, and are shaped by society. The primary purpose is to explore the relationships between individuals and the larger societal structures to which they belong. These structures may be social subgroups such as family, or ethnic/ race, or they may be larger institutions such as the government or markets. Symbolic Interaction has been criticized from multiple angles for either being too microscopic or not microscopic enough. Other critics have faulted the theory for ignoring the importance of social structures and social institutions and hence the impact of these on how society produces and reinforces social inequality and social injustice. (Stryker, 2002) Symbolic Interactionism: The Basics seeks to address these criticisms by exploring ongoing efforts by a new crop of adherents to give the paradigm the much-needed critical edge. In my opinion, Critical Constructivism provides that critical edge. In Chapter 12, I demonstrate how Critical Constructivism effectively plugs this major loophole—the lack of emphasis on social inequality. Critical constructivism (used interchangeably with critical constructionism) combines conflict theory (which focuses on the struggle for power resources between groups) and social constructionism (which treats reality as a human creation, rather than natural or divinely inspired). Critical constructionism differs from social constructionism only in that it emphasizes the role of elite interests in the process of reality It is a theoretical framework based on the

Introduction

xi

assumption that the way social reality is constructed, perceived and presented usually reflects the interests of society’s elite more than those of the mainstream, and often at the expense of those with the least power in society. Any theory that lacks reflexivity and introspection and the urge to move with the times, atrophies and dies. To this end, I devote considerable space to the ongoing efforts by scholars in the Symbolic Interactionism field to take a sober and impassioned look at its blind spots and loopholes, as they inject a new “realism” into the discipline in order to make it increasingly holistic. I do so by seeking to tie the loose ends of the paradigm by taking a look at its strengths and validities alongside with some criticisms leveled against it. I emphasize the staying power, vitality and the interesting ways the perspective has adapted to the changing and meandering terrain of the field of sociology. I discuss the postmodern turn of Symbolic Interactionism by scholars, particularly Ken Plumer. Scholars have debated and continue to debate what I call the enigma of society—its origin, evolution and its laws. Is society a sui generis, a selfregulating entity as Durkheim asserts or a socially constructed phenomenon? A Symbolic Interactionist approach to the topic begins with the assumption that society (the plurality and interactions of norms, social structures, and social institutions) is a human creation or social construct. This means that social subgroups as the family, ethnic/race are neither natural phenomena nor divinely created entities, but that is human-made and tied to and vary significantly across time and place. It also means that these phenomena ultimately rest on supra-individual processes of group boundary formation, segregation, and the creation of inter-group hierarchies. As well, it means that these institutions are not fixed in stone or immutable, or unchangeable; that since they are human creations, they can be uncreated, dismantled, reformed or improved. Symbolic Interactionism: The Basics provides a lucid lesson on the processes, logic, dynamics, and complexities of the enigma we call society. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman (1966) propose a nuanced and dialectical formula by suggesting that while individuals deliberately act, their actions do not take place in a vacuum, but that human actions are circumscribed by social forces beyond their control. What this also means is that while social forces may seem all powerful, entrenched, and unalterable, they are social constructions, human creations and hence can be unconstructed/changed by the same human beings (Quist-Adade, 2012). The dialectical relationship between social institutions and human agency has long been acknowledged by Karl Marx when he made these two observations:

xii

Introduction

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” (Marx, 1852, p. 7) “Man is a product of circumstances, but man, in turn, modifies those circumstances.” In short, Marx proposed that men are influenced by circumstances, but can change those same circumstances. This book takes a decidedly critical constructivist approach and seeks to show Symbolic Interactionism can atone for its sin of neglect of social inequality, power dynamics, and social change. Critical constructionism breathes critical life into the field and firmly puts it on the pedestal of an emancipatory project. By fusing symbolic interactionism and conflict theory, Critical Constructivism not to only explicate the dialectical and complex relationship between human agency and social structure, but also unmasks the power dynamics of human interactions at both micro and macro levels. The aim is to address the deficiencies of symbolic interactionism, which either overemphasizes human agency to the point of elevating individuals to the pedestal of omnipotence as demigods and goddesses, if not God itself, while reifying and in most cases ignoring structural, institutional and systemic inequality and injustice.

Chapter One: Society and the Social Animal What is Society? Sociologists define society in a variety of ways. Here a few a few: (1) Society constitutes relationships among groups: the sum of social relationships among groups of humans. (2) Society is a structured community of people: a structured community of people bound together by similar traditions, institutions, or nationality and (3) Society constitutes customs of a community: the customs of a community and the way it is organized. Society gives us human qualities. Through socialization (the lifelong process of learning social norms and behaviors) we learn to act and become human. According to Mead (1967), society and institutions represent the organized and patterned interactions among diverse individuals, this comes from the capacity of our mind where we can take roles of others and rehearse alternative lines of activity while coordinating our activities. Society is dependent upon the capacities of the self, via evaluating oneself. Society and its institutions are maintained, yet society is constantly in flux and filled with changes.

Briefly Sociology sees human beings as products of their social, cultural, and physical environment. As intensely social beings, humans need others to survive and flourish.

The human being is incomplete, an unfinished animal—families, friends, peers make possible human nature. We do not have it at birth; we acquire it from society. Society creates a being who uses symbols; language. Out of society arises the self, the remarkable ability to treat themselves as objects in the environment, to see themselves, to talk to themselves, and to control themselves. Finally, society creates the human mind. Mind is more than brain; it is the ability to think, to manipulate in our heads the physical world we see out there. Generalization, categorization, deliberation, contemplation, problemsolving and understanding depend on much more than biology gives us.

2

Chapter One

We are Social Animals Sociology studies the human being as a social being. What do we mean by this? Thus, society must create conditions that will make solidarity and cooperation among people possible. As Young (2011) notes, human development must be seen as a process—a human process—and for the success of the process, society must foster solidarity among its inhabitants. The human process, Young explains, is important because a person can become fully human only within the structure of social relations. All forms of human expression occur within social relationships. It is therefore important to look at what kinds of relationships are possible within a society. He dismisses the concept of the solitary individual as nonsensical, because as he writes, “one cannot be a mother without a child, a teacher without a student, a merchant without a customer or a judge without an offender.” (Young, p. 2011) Indeed, no one is an island unto himself or herself, to paraphrase the English poet, John Donne. Even Robinson Crusoe, had his Man Friday! While some social scientists have tended to overemphasize selfishness and even narcissism in human relationships and even trace the tendency to aggress to our genes, it is important to stress that human society is not possible without cooperation and solidarity. While not dismissing the tendency of people to pursue their self-interest and fight each other, it is important to stress that aggression is not a biological condition, but a social construct. We learn to cooperate with fellow human beings in the same way as we learn to fight each other. Just as it takes two to tango, it takes two to fight. Numerous lines of research have shown that human beings need others to develop, psychosomatically, i.e., cognitively, psychologically and physically. As Young notes, “studies of feral children, of orphanages, of neglected children, of maternity wards all demonstrate that infants and children need the stimulation and loving attention of others or they do not develop to their full potential.” (Young, 2011, p.1) In the same way, he continues, “studies of prisons, concentration camps, of warfare and of cultural collapse all show that people can be degraded and become as animals toward each other even when they have lived in peace and in cooperative relations for most of their lives.” (Young, 2011, p.1) We are born dependent on others. We survive because of them; we learn how to survive from them; we are socialized by them. Through socialization, we take on the ways of society and become members of society. We learn to control ourselves through the rules and perspective of society, thus making society possible. Through socialization, we develop symbols, self, and mind, qualities that make us both human and to some extent, free. Either because of socialization or because of our nature, humans come to live their whole lives around others, subject to the rules that dominate all social life (Charon, 2012).

Society and the Social Animal

3

From the time we are born, we rely on others for survival. We learn how to survive from others. We end up spending all of our lives in social organizations. Babbie (1993) has maintained that human beings are into society and spend their entire lives in it, seldom leaving it. Babbie further notes that human beings live in an organized community, working and playing in multiple formal organizations and groups. Each of these social groups “has rules for us to follow; each socializes us; in many of them, it is where our lives take on meaning. Nature probably commands that we live our lives in social organization or perish, but if nature does not command it, we learn it very early.” (Babbie, 1993, p.3) We develop our humanness through a protracted process of socialization, which begins in the cradle and ends in the grave, as it were. Thus, from the day we are born until the day we die, we depend on others for our survival. We need others in much the same way as they need us. The African Ubuntu philosophical precept rightly notes that “I am because we are.” The people we depend on to survive are not only our significant others— parents, siblings (if we have any), and other close relatives—but also include our neighbors and other compatriots, as well as citizens of far-flung countries. Thus, our survival depends on invisible ties and teamwork that extends beyond our homes, tribes, and countries. Indeed, our very survival is intertwined and interconnected in a web of mutuality, reciprocity, and dependency (Quist-Adade, 2012). Socialization — the process by which we learn to be human— makes us who we are or who we will become. It also makes us flexible and unpredictable. One basic characteristic of the human being is that we are all capable of both good and evil. Whether we turn out to be “Good Samaritans” or evilminded persons depends very much on a “conspiracy” of factors, the most important of which is socialization, which involves the internalization of societal norms and values. Socialization is no small matter (Babbie, 1993). The twists and turns of the long and winding process of socialization make a person adequately human, capable of discerning good and evil, distinguishing between morality and immorality and ethical and unethical behavior. At birth, the person relies merely on his or his instincts and imitation of significant others to navigate his or her “limited” world. With the passage of time and the accumulation of biological maturation, the individual gradually learns the norms and values of his or her society. An important and indispensable part of the socialization process is the learning and the use of symbols in their multiple forms, including language, verbal, non-verbal, kinetic, tactile, etc. The use of symbols is the foundation of micro, interpersonal interactions. Symbols allow for smooth and effective interpersonal, intergroup, and intercultural communication. But

4

Chapter One

the misuse of symbols could lead to your being shut out, ex-communicated or shot dead! For example, raising your thumb in North America is an expression of praise. But the same symbol in Iraq is the equivalence of showing someone of the middle finger in the U.S. Fig.1:1 –The Middle Finger and Significant and Non-significant Symbols

Source: Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/en/finger-provocation-rebel-422529), and Freepik (https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/male-hand-giving-a-thumbs-upsign_1327563.htm)

In Ghana, flicking the thumb has the same meaning as showing the middle finger. Context—place, time, power dynamics, gender relations, cultural settings, etc., are equally crucial in how symbol use by interlocutors can be successful or problematic. Significant symbols or symbols that have shared meanings for the interlocutors generally make interaction problem-free, while nonsignificant symbols—those that elicit confusion, misunderstanding, and incomprehension—become problematic. Humans are symbol creators and users. Our ability to create, recreate, manipulate, and change symbols in an infinite number of ways is what distinguishes us from other higher primates. The study of how humans create and recreate social reality through interactions and the use of symbols is the focus of symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interactionism views the individual as an active agent at the center of his or her world. In joint action with fellow active individuals, the individual shapes and reshapes his or her lifeworld. But, this does not mean that individuals are free-floating, masters of their world. Their actions are constrained contextually. Yet, as rational, thinking, reasoning social actors, they dance according to tune, as it were, gauging and responding to each situation in line with the appropriate or corresponding norms and “rules of engagement.” In other words, the individual actor acts according to his or her definition of the situation.

Society and the Social Animal

5

We Create that which Creates Us: The Dialectic of the Individual and Society The popular expression “It takes two to tango” gives us a fair understanding of the relationship between human beings and society. Human beings and society exist in a dynamic and dialectical, interconnected, interdependent, interacting, and codependent way. Without human beings, there is no society, yet human beings cannot function without society. Human beings create society, yet society in turn shapes and controls human beings. Humans create that which creates them (Babbie, 1993). As social animals, human beings need other human beings to function and even survive; they need society. Society provides the necessary conditions for survival in the form of cooperation, solidarity, sharing and mutual help. Far from a natural or divinely preordained entity, certain religious texts would want us to believe, society is a human creation. Human beings, through their everyday interactions, create society. At the same time, human beings must internalize, make society as part of themselves by following societal norms and values. This dialectical relationship between the individual and society is captured in the saying by Swish social scientist, Jean Jacques Rousseau that, “[m]an is born free and is everywhere in chains.” (Rousseau, 1762, p.1) What this means is that while individuals do have, and often exercise their agency, their actions are a caged bird or what German sociologist Max Weber termed the iron cage. Just as a caged bird has some wriggle room, some leeway inside the cage, which allows it to drink, to eat, move around, and even play and “exercise,” the bird’s actions are constricted by the iron/metal mesh of the cage. Are we the architects of our own lives or mere victims of circumstances? How powerful is the individual in forging his or her own life? Is she or he a mere cog in a super societal machine? Or is the social actor, armed with his or her intellect, thinking abilities, rationality, and reason, able to resist social norms and all the constraints that come with it? Social scientists have answered the question staking one position or the other, namely macrostructural and micro-interactionist. Social scientists who adopt the macrostructural approach or the macro-sociological paradigm posit that sociocultural norms, temporal (time/historical), spatial, and political imperatives and indeed power dynamics determine human actions and behavior. For them, human beings are mere puppets, bereft of any agency or fee will be controlled by powerful social forces. Humans are conceived as passive, powerless victims of circumstances, as it were. By contrast, social scientists who think the better of the two approaches is the micro-interactionist adopt the micro-sociological paradigm. They invest the social actor with the power of free will and agency, making her the active constructor of her actions and decisions. The social actor is cast as an almost omnipotent and independentminded, rationally thinking being, and impervious to external influences.

6

Chapter One

The Individual and Society: Two Perspectives and Two Levels of Analyses You may be familiar with instances where some teens stay in school, while others drop out, and other instances where a teenage dropout finds work, while another continues to be financially dependent on his/her parents or live off the streets. Social scientists are divided on the explanation as to why this happens. In sociology, there are two perspectives that seek to provide explanations as to why this occurs. The perspectives are the voluntarist or interactionist and the determinist or structuralist. The voluntarist-structuralist dichotomy mirrors the free-will versus determinism debate in social philosophy. The two perspectives reflect two distinctive ways or levels of social analysis—the micro and the macro as discussed above.

Box 1:1 - The Two Levels of Analyses Scenario One: Imagine yourself at a traffic light. The traffic light is on red. You are under irresistible pressure to empty your bladder. You look in all directions and you see no approaching vehicles and no traffic cop in sight. What will you do? Stand timidly and wet yourself? Will you cross the street on red? Scenario Two: Let’s assume you drove to class today. No one put a gun to your head to enter your car to drive to school. You did it on your own accord. But what would happen if other road users or motorists and perhaps pedestrians did not cooperate with you by obeying the traffic signals? Your answer(s) to each question will illuminate for you the voluntarist and structuralist positions respectively.

The voluntarist or interactionist perspective places emphasis on individual actions and decisions in predicting outcomes while it minimizes the effect of social structures, institutions or social environment. It assumes that individuals have the power to act and create things. While conflict, confusion, and misunderstanding do arise in society, individuals overcome conflict through negotiation, cooperation, and agreement. The special appeal of the voluntarist perspective lies in its investing in the individual actor the power of agency and recognizing his or her ability to take charge of his or her actions. It credits the social actor as actively creating and re-creating her reality in joint action with others, rather as dunces, who are swayed or influenced by outside forces or social structures and institutions. But the voluntarist perspective overemphasizes the individual actor’s actions and decisions. It minimizes the efficacy and the influence of social institutions and social norms. In its attempt to grant agency to the individual actor, the voluntarist perspective renders social institutions powerless. Sociologists who adopt this perspective tend to forget

Society and the Social Animal

7

that, social actors create their own futures by realizing the consequences of their decisions and possibilities presented by the social environment. Yes, we do have the power to create and achieve things, but our actions take place within structures and institutions that provide us with knowledge, the social motivation to carry out actions. Our actions are circumscribed, constrained, influenced positively or negatively by culturally patterned arrangements (Quist-Adade, 2012). As Giddens (1984) emphasized, individuals create and act on things, but those actions take place within the structures and institutions that define social rules and behavior. Berger and Luckman (1967) for their part, posited that individuals both have power agency to act, to create, but are influenced, motivated or constrained by social structures, institutions or social environment. The determinist/structuralist perspective places emphasis on social structures and minimizes the efficacy of individual actions and decisions. It holds that the individual's actions are constrained by the social environment. In other words, societal forces are stronger than the individual's free will or power. There is validity in the assertion by sociologists who take the structuralist perspective that the social actor does not operate in a vacuum. Just as Swiss philosopher, Jean Jacque Rousseau noted that “Man is born free and is everywhere in chains,” every human action is constrained by the chains of social norms, prescribing and proscribing what we should do and not do, when, where, how and with whom. This perspective commits the same sin of “shifting the balance of power” in favor one side of the individual-society “equation” as the voluntarist perspective by divesting the social actor of any agency or power. The social actor is reduced to a powerless being passively and mindlessly following society’s lead. If the voluntarist perspective treats the social actor as active and obstinate being capable of resisting societal influence, the determinist approach views people as nothing but conforming and obedient beings fated to the whims and caprices of social structures and social institutions. It takes a fatalistic view of human beings, in that human behavior is assumed to be irrevocably tied to social norms and institutions. But we know that humans have agency, and often do exercise that agency. That is why some teenagers, in spite of long years of socialization, go against their parents’ advice and teachers’ counseling and drop out of school to join gangs, for example. Let’s us consider the two scenarios in box 1.1 to illustrate the two positions: The Two Levels of Analyses Sociologists in the structuralist-determinist and voluntarist-interactionist camps adopt two different methods or levels of analyses of social reality— macro and micro respectively. Macro-Level Analysis focuses on large social

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Chapter One

structures or institutions and their relationships to other institutions. Institutions perpetuate the stable cluster of values norms, roles, and expectations that decide how the needs of society should be met. Through socialization strategies, bureaucratic, and informal practices, institutions transfer cultural beliefs, values and, norms from genera-generation. For example, Canadian professors, through both formal institutional training and informal collegial networks, come to learn how to treat their students. Institutions act as a bridge between what people believe and what people do. Institutional studies focus on roles, status, and social groups. Macro-sociologists study the impact of social institutions, such as the family, the economy, the polity, and the media, on individual behavior and life chances. For example, a Marxist or a conflict sociologist might seek to determine how one's educational achievement is determined by his or her social class and a functionalist might want to investigate how primary socialization—which primarily takes place in the family— will impact the future behavioral characteristics of teenagers. The family will be praised or blamed depending on how the teens turn out to be in the future, as dropouts or law-abiding citizens. Micro-Level Analysis, by contrast, concentrates on the daily exchanges among individuals. It is associated with three sociological perspectives, namely, interactionism, phenomenology, and ethnomethodology. The last two approaches, like the first, all concentrate on daily exchanges among individuals. Sociologists who adopt the macro-level analysis do not see society as already existing, “out there,” influencing, controlling the human being. Rather, society is imagined as an on-going interaction, communication, cooperation, and negotiation of social patterns. Society is emergent and emerging through continuous interactions. Society is seen as work in progress, rather than a stable, solid entity. Society is created and recreated as individual actors interact with others via symbols—verbal and non-verbal. Thus, micro settings, such as the classroom, the mall, and the stadium are the ideal places for micro-sociologists to study how social reality is created. They seek to understand how individuals (students, professors, and fans) adjust their behavior to the setting (the classroom or the stadium). Thus, like social chameleons people are, they “cut their act” to match their definition of the situation. The interactionist or voluntarist perspective and its corresponding micro-level analysis fall under the symbolic interactionist paradigm. This unique and exciting paradigm has made valuable contributions to sociology and other social science disciplines. An important contribution is its anti-positivistic position. Positivists assume that humans being can be studied in the same fashion as the natural world is studied, through observation, the collection of empirical data from the observation and analysis of the data and then arriving at a certain conclusion about the observed phenomenon. Symbolic interactionists contend that human behavior is too complex, malleable, unpredictable, and

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largely unobtrusive to lend themselves to the empirical method employed by the natural and physical sciences. Let’s take a biologist studying a colony of bees as an example. All she does is to observe the flying-ins and flying-outs of the bees from their hive; when, how many times, etc., record and analyze her data. Human behavior is more complex than the genetically-pre-wired automatic behavior of bees. Humans do not wear their hearts on their sleeves and can hide their true feelings and intentions. They can alter their actions without warning. As mentioned above, symbolic interactionism tends to be strongly antipositivist. It is basically interpretivist and idealist and tends to emphasize description over explanation. Symbolic interactionism stakes an intermediate position between structuralism and psychological reductionism In the remaining pages of this book, we will explore the history, logic, the progression, the “movers and shakers” i.e., the founders and “disciples” of the interactionist paradigm and the mini-theories that fall under this metatheory. A metatheory is a theory about theories. We use it here to imply mega or major or master (theory). From Macrosociology to Microsociology The micro-sociological paradigm or perspective is to sociology what social psychology is to psychology. Popularly known as symbolic interactionism and often called sociological social psychology, this paradigm has many types or branches, including (1) Symbolic interactionism, which traces its roots to the works of United States sociologists George Hebert Mead, Charles Horton Cooley, and Herbert Blumer, and a Canadian sociologist, Erving Goffman; (2) Ethnomethodology, postulated by Harold Garfinkel; (3) Phenomenology developed by the Austrian-American Alfred Schultz. Contemporary sociologists have adapted and developed these ideas, creating a great variety of mixed interaction approaches (Wallace and Wolf, 2011). Sociologists have identified two main levels of symbolic interactionism, namely structure or action, determined or creative (Gingrich, 2013). These two levels are another way of looking at the structure-voluntarist dichotomy discussed above. (a) Structures or Action. As stated above, sociologists who adopt the macrosociological approach place a premium on large-scale social structures, institutions, systems, features of society and whole societies, such as social class, the family, the media, power, capitalism, feudalism, forms of authority, rationalization, American society, and broad historical developments. On the other hand, sociologists adopting the micro-sociological orientation are concerned with interpersonal interactions. As Gingrich (2013, p.1) notes, “Where

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the settings are within larger-scale structures, the micro-focus is still on how individuals interpret the situation and interact with other individuals in these settings.” Gingrich (2013) contends that the starting point of all sociological theories, including the classical ones is the micro realm. Theorists start with concepts, but use these to develop macro-sociological theories. Thus, Gingrich, explains, “Marx begins with a micro concept, the commodity, but derives this from a study of capitalism as a whole, and uses it to explain the structure of this system.” (p.2) Max Weber and Talcott Parsons were no exceptions. They both began in the micro realm—the theory of social action. Yet, both ended up constructing macro theories out of their respective versions of action theory, which one could say straddled the macro and micro worlds. As Gingrich (2013, p. 2) observes, “While the action approaches of Weber and Parsons could have led to an interaction perspective, neither author really developed such an approach.” Weber paid only a fleeting attention to meaning. In fact, he did not even define what meaning is before quickly hopping onto structural and macro phenomena such as social groups, organizations, history, and structures of power. For his part, Parsons began with a focus on how the individual acts and interacts in a situation, but transitions to social systems While interaction underlies Parsons analysis of social systems, it was not his primary concern. (Gingrich 2013) While the macro theories are distinguished by their focus on repeated, regularized, and ritualized action engaged in common by large numbers of social actors, the micro theories are characterized by a focus on individual action, meaning of the action, the process and nature of interaction, and the individual as unique, and the self as a process and emergent entity. (b) Determined or Creative. For sociologists who adopt the macro approach, social action is determined by large-scale structural features of society. More specifically, structural and macro sociologists posit that social action is determined by the cultural and value systems of a given society. The macro paradigm gives little room for, or analysis of, individual creativity in social interaction. In other words, the actions of social actors are determined and circumscribed by social norms, cultural values, laws, religion, social class, consciousness, and ideology. Social actors are thus projected not as individuals with free will or agency, but rather as mere powerless puppets manipulated by powerful societal norms and value systems. Social actors are seen as victims of circumstances, rather than captains of the ship of their destiny. According to the macro-structural approach, the effect of the structural forces on social action can be determined and examined empirically in sociological studies. For example, Marx concluded that capitalism powerfully impacted the lives of individuals living under the system. Durkheim sought to demon-

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strate how the division of labour and suicide as social facts or social structures impinge on social actors and Weber, on his part, established that rationalization affected how social actors adapted to and acted in an increasingly bureaucratizing industrialized capitalist Western society. In contrast, the interaction approach invests the social actor with free will. It considers humans to be creative, with unique selves and individual forms of interaction. Social actors are deemed to be the architects of their own actions and destinies, as it were; captains of the ship of their destiny. For these sociologists, social reality or interaction is not universally generalizable and cannot be studied empirically. Social action and interaction, they insist, can only be studied by carefully examining the ways in which symbols, structures, and organizations are understood by each social actor and how different social actors come to interpret interaction differently (Gingrich 2013) The interactionist paradigm studies, among other things, the development of the child, socialization, and the formation of self and individual identity. According to this paradigm, personality and identity are not biologically or genetically determined, but are socially constructed, i.e., developed actively within the social environment. While the symbolic interaction approach identifies symbols as important, these are not so determined as the values, norms, or consciousness of the classical theorists and Parsons. Rather, sociologists working within the interaction tradition assert that the basis for social interaction is "a common set of symbols and understandings possessed by people in a group" (Wallace and Wolf, 2011, p. 191). These are developed through socialization and continual interaction with other individuals. The sociologist must also understand how the development of the self occurs as children and adults "interpret, evaluate, define, and map out their own action" (Wallace and Wolf, p. 191), rather than merely being "passive beings who are impinged upon by outside forces." (Wallace and Wolf, 2011, p, 191) (c) Decision or Practice. A third difference between the macro and micro approaches is the underlying approach to social action. Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Parsons all postulated their respective theories based the assumption that action stems from a conscious and considered decision on the part of the social actor. The assumption undergirding this approach may have been influenced by the view of the enlightenment thinkers that individuals are rational decision makers who weigh alternatives, and decide on the best course of action. In his theory of social action, Parsons was explicit regarding the rational, decision making process by the social actor. Marx, Weber, and Durkheim were less explicit, but such an approach can be discerned implicitly. On the other hand, the interaction paradigm focuses more on actual individual social actors’ activities and actions, and what they do in given social situations. For interactionists, whether or not such action is consciously con-

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sidered and aimed at achieving a specific goal is of little concern. Instead, they are more interested in examining the experiences, practices, actions, and situations of social actors in order to see what they do, while seeking to understand how these phenomena occur and why they find them meaningful. Among other things, interactionists focus on the everyday lived experiences, face-to-face, small-scale interactions. They seek to understand how the generally accepted features of society emerge and how social actors make meaning of these features. (Gingrich 2013)


 Briefly The theory of the duality of structure and agency The central premise of this theory is that while individuals act on things, their actions take place within the context of social structures.

 From Decoupling to Coupling: Micro-Macro Nexus As mentioned earlier, all sociological theories, including the classic ones had as their starting point the micro-universe. Gingrich (2013) has suggested that sociologists start with one slice of social reality in the form of a concept and end with macro-sociological theories. Using Marx’s theoretical trajectory as an example, Gingrich observed: “Marx begins with a micro concept, the commodity, but derives this from a study of capitalism as a whole, and uses it to explain the structure of this system.” (p.2) He emphasized that none of the classical sociological theorists—Marx, Weber, and Durkheim—were able to develop a theory that attempted to decouple the micro and micro realms. “While the action approaches of Weber and Parsons could have led to an interaction perspective, neither author really developed such an approach.” (Gingrich 2013, p.2) Berger and Luckman’s theory of the duality of structure and agency, the central thesis of their book, The Social Construction of Reality (1986) is one among many theories that seek to bridge the gap between structure and agency. The central premise of this theory is that while individuals act on things, their actions take place within the context of social structures. There are two parts to the structure-agency nexus, which reflect the crude/simplistic and mechanical structure versus agency/determinism versus free will formulations.

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The structure part divests individuals of any power and casts them as mere puppets, bereft of any free will or agency and manipulated by powerful social institutions. It takes a fatalistic view of human beings, seeing them as victims of circumstances. Thus, human failings are blamed on social institutions, giving some people the excuse to invoke the saying ‘the devil made me do it.’ At the same time, the structural approach acknowledges the limits of human power. While the structural approach may invest significant power in social institutions, it is important to point out that sometimes it is not the lack of trying or inaction that is the cause of failure or lack of progress (Quist-Adade, 2012). The sociological theories adopted by early European sociologists from Auguste Comte, Hebert Spencer, Durkheim, Karl Marx, to Max Weber were built on the macro and structural planks. These early theorists were by and large on the structure side of the structure-agency divide. The changes taking place all over Europe confronted scholars with many kinds of questions, such as what was the nature of society. Where did society come from? What held society together? What roles did various social institutions play? Arguing from the structural-functionalist perspective, Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, and to a lesser extent, Weber viewed society is constituting macro phenomena as social structures and social institutions with tremendous influence on individual behaviors and actions. Thus, social institutions such as the family, the media, religion, and the educational system are deemed by structural-functionalists as exerting huge influences on individuals. For example, the family influences people, particularly young ones by socializing them to become compliant, law-abiding members of society. The educational system grooms people to become productive members of society. From the Marxist perspective, society was an arena of constant struggle between social classes. Social institutions such as the media and religion worked in favor of the dominant members of society. The agency part of the theory of Berger and Luhman’s theory, on the other hand, invests individuals with the power of agency, positing that people are not puppets, that are manipulated by power social institutions and social forces, but that they [people] possess free will and who exercise their agency. This position may argue: ‘We’re captains of the ship of our destiny’ and we do make choices for good or for bad. Some are better able to make choices than others. Those who make poor choices have themselves to blame. ‘The fault is in them, not in society.’ This approach is likely to engender a blame-thevictim mentality. The poor, for example, are poor ‘because of their laziness and lack of motivation, not because of society. They have no one, but themselves to blame.’ (Quist-Adade, 2012) Micro-sociological theorists hold that the best way to understand the way society works is to look at the small-scale interpersonal interactions between individuals. They veer away from large

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social institutions as the basis for explaining the workings of society. These theories emerged in North America, where sociologists posed a different set of questions. The North American sociologists were more interested in understanding the bases of social action and micro-interactions among social actors. They reasoned that since it is this everyday, face-face-to-face microinteractions that define the social world, underlying social structures and maintain societies, it is pertinent for sociologists to understand these underlying logic and dynamics of these interactions (Mann, 2011; Wallace and Wolf, 2010). Chapter Summary •

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Society constitutes relationships among groups: the sum of social relationships among groups of humans. Society creates a being who uses symbols, language. Out of society arises the self, the remarkable ability to treat themselves as objects in the environment, to see themselves, to talk to themselves, and to control themselves. Society creates the human mind. Mind is the ability to think, to manipulate in our heads the physical world we see out there. Sociology studies the human being as a social being. We are born dependent on others. We survive because of them; we learn how to survive from them; we are socialized by them. Through socialization, we take on the ways of society and become members of society. We learn to control ourselves through the rules and perspective of society, thus making society possible. Through socialization, we develop symbols, self, and mind, qualities that make us both human and to some extent, free. Socialization — the process by which we learn to be human— makes us who we are or who we will become. Significant symbols or symbols have shared meanings for the interlocutors generally make interaction problem-free. Non-significant symbols elicit confusion, misunderstanding, and incomprehension. Humans create that which creates them. As social animals, human beings need other human beings to function and even survive; they need society. Society provides the necessary conditions for survival in the form of cooperation, solidarity, sharing and mutual help. Human beings, through their everyday interactions, create society. At the same time, human beings must internalize, make society as part of themselves by following societal norms and values.

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Macro-structural approach posits that socio-cultural norms, temporal (time/historical), spatial, and political imperatives and power dynamics determine human actions and behavior. The micro-sociological paradigm says that the social actor has the power of free will and agency, making her the active constructor of her actions and decisions. The voluntarist or interactionist perspective places emphasis on individual actions and decisions in predicting outcomes while it minimizes the effect of social structures, institutions or social environment. The determinist/structuralist perspective places emphasis on social structures and minimizes the efficacy of individual actions and decisions. Macro Level Analysis focuses on large organizations and their relationships to other institutions. Micro Level Analysis concentrates on the daily exchanges among individuals. It is associated with three sociological paradigms, namely, interactionism, phenomenology, and ethnomethodology. A metatheory is a theory about theories. Symbolic interactionism or sociological social psychology traces its roots to the works of United States sociologists George Hebert Mead, Charles Horton Cooley, and Herbert Blumer, and a Canadian sociologist, Erving Goffman; (2) Ethnomethodology, postulated by Harold Garfinkel; (3) Phenomenology developed by the Austrian-American Alfred Schultz .

Chapter Two: Symbolic Interactionism: A Brief Introduction Symbolic Interactionism places a premium on human agency and creativity, In doing so it accentuates how individuals create and recreate their social worlds through the use and manipulation of symbols in a joint interaction with co-social actors in a dynamic and infinite fashion. According to the Oxford Dictionary, “Symbolic interactionism grew out of the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism in the late 19th century, especially as elaborated by William James, John Dewey, and Charles S. Peirce.” Famed founder of SI, George Herbert Mead is credited with forging a bridge between the pragmatic tradition and sociology. Other founders who cemented the SI tradition into sociology were Charles Horton Cooley and William Isaac Thomas. However, most sociologists agree that the most important exponent of SI was Herbert Blumer, who coined the perspective’s label in 1937. Blumer’s book, Symbolic Interactionism. It is a primarily a United States phenomenon. SI insists on the active role of social actors in constructing their social world while rejecting the view that sees individuals as pawns of social structures. Commenting on the contribution of Georg Simmel to the Symbolic Interactionist perspective, noted: Simmel’s sensitivity ...resulted in a striking insight…The social institutions that make up the relatively permanent heritage of society--the state, the family, the economy, the class structure, are only an extended version of the everyday interactions of men and women meeting on the street, in stores and offices, or at a party. Thus, by studying the formal structure of the more fleeting encounters, we reach the essence of our invisible society.” (Collins and Makowsky, p. 161). As a micro perspective, Symbolic Interactionism tends to be strongly anti-positivistic and it is basically interpretivist and idealist in orientation. It stakes an intermediate position between structuralism and psychological reductionism.

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Historical Evolution of Symbolic Interactionism Symbolic Interactionism developed through two historical periods, namely The oral period, which was marked by the period when George Herbert Mead lectured at the University of Chicago. During this period, Mead did not write any academic works on Symbolic Interactionism. The Age of inquiry period. This period saw the advent the leading exponents of the perspective, George Herbert Blumer, Manford Khun, Robert Park, Albion Small, Peter Burgess. This period saw the emergence of two competing directions of Symbolic Interactionism—the Chicago School led by Blumer and the Iowa School, headed by Manford Khun. History of Two Schools The first well-developed theoretical perspective to emerge from George Herbert Mead's synthesis was "symbolic interactionism,” This term was coined by Herbert Blumer who, on Mead's death, took over his social psychology course and who for some fifty years championed a particular interpretation of Mead's ideas. Blumer's advocacy was challenged by Manford Kuhn’s alternative school at the State University of Iowa. Points of Convergence in Symbolic Interactionism Both schools agreed on the following basic tenets: • • •

Humans are symbol users. Humans create their social world through interactions and role taking. Interaction, humans, and society are linked

The Chicago School (1) For Blumer, humans have the capacity to view themselves as objects and to insert any object into an interaction situation. (2) Human actors are not pushed and pulled around by s/ and psychological forces (3) Humans are active creators of the world to which they respond. (4) Humans are spontaneous and unpredictable. Blumer appears to be suggesting that “Humans are complete captains of their destinies” by investing the power agency in human actors. The Iowa School (1)Manford Kuhn, on another hand, emphasized the importance of people's "core self" as an object. (2) Through socialization, humans acquire a relatively stable set of meanings and attitudes toward themselves. (3) The core self will shape and constrain the way people will define situations by circumscribing

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the cues that will be seen and the objects that will be injected into situations. (4) Human personality is structured and comparatively stable. (5) There are a continuity and predictability of human actions and behavior. Khun’s direction of Symbolic Interactionism injects some level of pragmatism and nuance. It grants agency social actors, it also acknowledges the power of social structures in shaping human actions. The premise here can be couched in such terms: “Humans may be captains of their destinies, but their destinies are shaped by society.” Summary of Differences in Two Schools Chicago School interactionists viewed individuals as potentially spontaneous, interaction as constantly in the process of change, and s/ organization as fluid and tenuous. Iowa School interactionists were more prone to see individual personality and social organization as structured, with interactions being constrained by these structures. These differences in assumptions resulted in varying conceptions about how to investigate the social world and how to build theory. Differences in Research Methods and Theorizing The Chicago School adopts a humanistic, qualitative research methodology and a more voluntaristic orientation. The Iowa School, in contrast, adopts the scientific, quantitative research methodology and a more deterministic orientation. Symbolic Interactionism: The Antithesis of Functionalist and Conflict Paradigms If the structural-functionalist and the conflict paradigms dominate the macro-sociological landscape and are concerned with social structures, institutions, and entire societies, symbolic interactionism occupies the microsociological universe, and turns its gaze on small-scale, face-to-face interpersonal interactions. Symbolic interactionism or interactionism, for short, is one of the major theoretical paradigms in sociology. The term was coined by Herbert Blumer. He coined the term when he was invited to write a chapter on social psychology in an attempt to clarify how social psychologists differed in their views of human nature. He wanted to clarify how social psychology was largely interested in the social development of the individual. The central task of symbolic interactionism is to study how individuals develop socially as a result of participating in group life. It primarily focuses on issues relating to the "self" and small group interactions. Blumer explained that social psychol-

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ogy was interested in the social development of the individual and the central task of sociological social psychologists was to study how the individual develops socially as a result of participating in group life. The primary focus of symbolic interactionism is social intercourse or interaction. (Wallace and Wolf, 2006) Blumer notes that “the term ‘symbolic interaction’ refers, of course, to the peculiar and distinctive character of interaction as it takes place between human beings,” adding that human beings interpret or "define" each other's actions instead of merely reacting to each other's actions. He further asserts: “Their "response" is not made directly to the actions of one another but instead is based on the meaning which they attach to such actions. Thus, human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another's actions” (Blumer, p.180, as cited in Wallace & Wolf, 2006). Blumer posits that humans create and use symbols. Symbols help us communicate via voice, language, and body language. People can communicate, interact, and read each other through taking the role of the other and by anticipating the responses of others. Mind, self, society are intimately connected to one another. Humans “define the situation via naming, categorizing, and orienting themselves to objects including seeing themselves as objects, and the ability to derive a self-image. According to Blumer (1969), the characteristics of this approach are (i) human interaction, (ii) interpretation or definition, rather than mere reaction, (iii) response based on meaning, (iv) use of symbols, and (v) interpretation between stimulus and response. Blumer proposed an interpretive model for sociology which "inserts a middle term into the stimulus-response couplet so that it becomes stimulus-interpretation-response" (Wallace and Wolf, 206). What Symbolic Interactionism? Many Definitions, One Concept Broadly, Symbolic Interactionism is a theoretical framework or paradigm based on the assumption that social reality is created and recreated (continuously) through human interactions through the use of symbols. Young (2013, p.1) defines symbolic interactionism as “a loose set of assumptions about how symbols are used to create a shared frame of meaning which, in turn, is used to organize and to interpret human behavior in loose and everchanging patterns of work, commerce, family, worship, and play.” Young explained that “this process, symbolic interaction, is the solid empirical basis for a social magic in which that which does not exist and which has no causal precursors, does in fact, come into actuality. It is a remarkable and wonderful process yet, it happens everywhere two or more human beings define a situation, reify it by means of belief, organize their behavior as if such a social

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event were real and, in consequence, create a fractal, intersubjective social fact.” (p.1) Based on the idea that social reality is constructed in each human interaction through the use of symbols - words, gestures, and communicating through language Studying social interaction is key to understanding human behavior. One of its main concerns is the ability of actors to modify their behaviors to meet the needs of the present and immediate social environment. Symbolic interactionists assume that social reality is not something out there, already existing, but rather it is created when people engage one another in communication. For example, your introduction to sociology class is not something that existed prior to the class session/meeting. It is not something you miraculously found yourself in. Rather, the class is something you, collectively with your classmates and instructor, are creating here and now through the use verbal (the English language) and non-verbal (nodding, smiling, knitting of the eyebrows, grimacing) communication. In other words, your class is being created here and now through the collective actions and indeed inactions (silence is also a form of communication; that’s why you hear people say “silence speaks louder than words.”). For T. R. Young (1991:3), SI “is a loose set of assumptions about how symbols are used to create a shared frame of meaning which, in turn, is used to organize and to interpret human behavior in loose and ever-changing patterns of work, commerce, family, worship and play.” Young (1991) explains that the SI “process is the solid empirical basis for a social magic in which that which does not exist and which has no causal precursors, does in fact come into actuality,” (3) adding “It is a remarkable and wonderful process yet it happens everywhere two or more human beings define a situation, reify it by means of belief, organize their behavior as if such a social event were real and, in the consequence, create a fractal, intersubjective social fact.” (3) Symbolic interactionism is a social psychological or micro-sociological approach, which studies how the individual develops socially by participating in group life. Several basic assumptions inform this paradigm. The first assumption is that humans are symbol users (Mann, 2012, pp. 185-186). The key elements of social life are symbols. Emphasis is placed on the capacity of humans to create and use symbols. Thus, symbolic interactionists, as their name implies, place enormous emphasis on the capacity of humans to create and use symbols as they interact with others. The second assumption is that individuals are active constructors of their own conduct; interpret, evaluate, define, and map out their own action. The emphasis here is on how individuals interact through role-taking, i.e., imitating others (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). Symbolic interactionists are interested in small-scale interpersonal relationships. The third assumption is that the mind, the self, and society are intimately connected. Symbolic interactionism posits a relationship between

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the genesis of "humanness" and patterns of interaction. It seeks to unravel the genesis of the mind and the self. The mind is defined as the capacity to think, to symbolically denote, weigh, assess, anticipate, map, and construct courses of action. The Meadian term, “mind,” is rarely used today (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). The concept of mind has been reformulated to embrace –William Isaac and Dorothy Thomas’ definition of the situations. They proposed that with the capacities of mind, actors can name, categorize, and orient themselves to constellations of objects—including themselves as objects—in all situations. In this way, they can assess weigh, and sort out appropriate lines of conduct (Mann, 2012, pp. 185-186). Emphasis of the interactionist orientation is on: (a) the emergence of selfconceptions—relatively stable and enduring conceptions that people have about themselves; (b) the ability to derive self-images—pictures of oneself as an object in social situations. The self is thus a major object that people inject into their definitions of situations. It shapes much of what they see, feel, and do in the world around them. Society is possible only by virtue of people's capacities to define situations and their abilities to view themselves as objects in situations. Society can only exist by virtue of human capacities for thinking and defining situations and human capacities for self-reflection and evaluation (Mann, 2011). Symbolic interactionism questions the structural determinism of structural functionalism and conflict theory, which argue that human actions and relations are affected and determined by the social structures in society (Powers, 2004, p. 172). Symbolic interactionism, in contrast, focuses on the agency or the power of individuals to shape their social relations and to redefine shared meanings prevalent in society. It does not deny the effects of structures on individuals; it accounts for them. However, they also look at the role of individuals in redefining these structures of society or in reproducing them through their individual and collective actions. Symbolic interactionism attempts to answer the following questions: 1) How are society and individual connected and linked?; 2) How do individual acts and social structures influence one another?”; 3) How are societies reproduced through the actions and interactions of its individual members?; and 4) How are the thoughts and actions of members of society influenced by the social structures of society? (Turner et al., 2002, p. 434). These are the questions that scholars such as Durkheim, Weber, and Marx did not explore in detail. Symbolic interactionism is based on three main principles. First, it focuses on the interactions between social actors and the world. Second, symbolic interactionists are critical of those who consider social structures as static. They conceptualize the actor and the world as dynamic processes (Ritzer,

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2000, p. 338). Third, symbolic interactionism views social actors as capable and involved in actively interpreting the social world around them (Ritzer, 2000, p. 338). George Ritzer (2000) provides an exhaustive list of the main elements of symbolic interactionism. He described them as seven principles. Ritzer’s Seven Principles of Symbolic Interactionism (1) All human understanding occurs by assigning meaning to experience. (2) Meanings are learned in interactions. (3) All social structures and institutions are created by interaction between individuals. (4) Social realities are created and recreated by interaction. (5) Mind is a mirror of interaction between persons. (6) Behavior is enacted in the social group through interaction. (7) Behavior can only be understood by ascertaining the individual's meanings for the behavior. Symbols, Language, Thought, and Mind Symbolic Interactionism emphasizes the roles symbols, language, and thought play in society and proposes that human life is lived in the symbolic domain. In other words, humans can only function in society through the creation and use of symbols. “Symbols are culturally derived social objects having shared meanings that are created and maintained in social interaction.” (Gecas & Tsushima, 2013, p.1) As discussed above, symbols play a central role in the construction of reality. Through language and communication, symbols serve as a vehicle through which reality is created. Equally important in the reality construction process is language and thought. (See Quist-Adade & Mirfakhraie, 2013) Language and thought are vital in the interpretation of symbols. Social actors have and always will be affected by language and thought. Both Language and thought arise out of people interacting with one another. Language and thought co-exist in a dynamic, interacting, and dialectical relationship. Language is a system of sounds, and sometimes, figures to which people collectively attach meaning. Spoken words, written words, and pictures form part of language. Each word or picture means different things to each social actor. Each social actor’s language is shaped by other social actors. Language aids communication. Communication can be defined as symbols that can be strung together in an infinite number of ways for the purpose of communicating. According to some sociologists and social linguists, language shapes thinking and perception. It is believed to even precede thought and

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determines our consciousness (Sapir and Whorf.) Language is not a given. It is socially and culturally determined. It serves as a repository and source of meaning. As far as Symbolic Interactionists are concerned, everything in life has not only a meaning but multiple meanings. All objects, including animate and inanimate ones, such as people, birds, stones, and mountains, as well as abstract ideas have meanings or better still, are assigned certain names. The assignment of meanings or names is a social process, occurring as people interact with those objects. In other words, meanings are never inherent or natural. Thought Human beings are born equipped with a mind wired for thought (an idea or opinion produced by thinking or occurring suddenly in the mind). That mind allows everyone to interpret the symbols of our language. According to Blumer (1969), the social actor has the ability to take the role of the other. This allows us to find new meaning and different perspectives in life. The primary focus of symbolic interactionism is social intercourse and the processes by which the social actor makes decisions and forms opinions. The social actor is perceived not as a passive being who is impinged upon by external/outside forces. Rather, the social actor is viewed as an active constructor of social reality in conjunction with fellow social actors. The Mind According to Mann (2012), the mind or mental component of man emerges out of human communication. It is a process manifested whenever the individual is interacting with himself using significant symbols (symbols or gestures with interpretations or meanings). The mind is also the component of the individual that interrupts responses to stimuli. It is the mind that attempts to pre-vision the future by exploring possible outcomes of actions before proceeding with actions. In minded behavior, the individual carries on an internal conversation. The mind, according to Mead, uses symbols to designate objects. It seeks alternatives in actions, inhibits inappropriate actions and selects proper courses of action (imaginative rehearsal). For Mead, the mind is a process, not a structure. He used the term “minding” to underscore the fact that the mind is not a thing or the tissue, but a process, which emerges in social interaction. He posits that humans, through this processes, develop gestures of communication with common meanings, and assist in the communication of desires and wanted and courses of action. We perceive and interpret gestures with other humans with whom we must cooperate for survival and we are also able to put ourselves in another’s place and “take the role of the other”.

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Blumer emphasized that humans can view themselves as objects and insert any object into an interaction situation – humans are active in the creation of their own world to which they respond. They can only understand via their experience and their interpretation of social organization and there is always room for spontaneity in every situation. For his part, Kuhn emphasized that each person has a core-self, every human has a stable set of meanings and attitudes towards themselves through socialization. This core-self shapes and constrains the way we define situations. Humans seek and have continuity and predictability. We work out the meaning of social objects through the interaction with others, particularly with what Kuhn, called the Iowa School), terms the orientational others, those to whom we are emotionally and psychologically committed. Kuhn (1954) developed the Twenty Statements Test (TST) to empirically measure various aspects of the self. The TST consists of twenty “I am…” statements, which are categorized into four groups, namely, (1) Physical self-descriptors (e.g., blonde) (2) Social self-descriptors (daughter) (3)Attributive self-descriptors (happy), (4) Global self-descriptors (human) Synopsis We briefly summarize the main assumptions of SI. (1) Humans as Symbol Users: The key elements of social life are symbols. Here the emphasis is placed on the capacity of humans to create and use symbols. (2) Interaction and Role Taking: Individuals are active constructors of their own conduct, who interpret, evaluate, define, and map out their own actions. (3) Interaction, Humans, and Society: The mind, self, and society are intimately connected. There is a relation between the genesis of "humanness" and patterns of interaction and the genesis of mind and self. (4) Mind is the capacity to think, to symbolically denote, weigh, assess, anticipate, map, and construct courses of action. (5) Definition of the Situations: The concept of mind has been reformulated to embrace -W. I. Thomas’ definition of the situations. With the capacities of mind, actors can name, categorize, and orient themselves to constellations of objects-including themselves as objects-in all situations. In this way, they can assess weigh, and sort out appropriate lines of conduct.

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Emphasis in the interactionist orientation is on: • • • •

• •

The emergence of self-conceptions-relatively stable and enduring conceptions that people have about themselves and The ability to derive self-images-pictures of oneself as an object in social situations. The self is a major object that people inject into their definitions of situations. And it shapes much of what they see, feel, and do in the world around them. Society is possible only by virtue of people's capacities to define situations. The focus is on people’s capacities to view themselves as objects in situations. Interactionists maintain that society can exist by virtue of human capacities for thinking and defining. They assert that society can exist by virtue of human capacities for self-reflection and evaluation.

In addition, • • • • •

Humans create and use symbols. They communicate with symbols. They interact through role taking, which involves the reading of symbols emitted by others. What makes them unique as a species—the existence of mind and self—arises from interaction. Conversely, the emergence of these capacities allows for the interactions that form the basis of society. Symbolic Interactionism: Images, Histories, and Themes

Symbolic Interactionism is a decidedly an American tradition with a history stretching back through the 20th century but becoming a prominent theoretical perspective in American sociology only during the 1960s. As noted earlier, SI emerged from the pragmatic tradition of philosophy. George Herbert Mead is noted for forging a bridge between the pragmatic tradition and sociology. Other founders who cemented the SI tradition into sociology were Charles Horton Cooley and William Isaac Thomas. However, most sociologists agree that the most important exponent of SI was Herbert Blumer, who coined the perspective’s label in 1937 in his book, Symbolic Interactionism. Another prominent contributor to the perspective was German sociologist, Max Weber.

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In a brief summary of the history, evolution, themes, and the “movers and shakers” of what he termed “symbolic interactionist sociologies,” Ken Plummer (2014) identifies four interconnecting themes. He elaborated the four themes as: (1) Human worlds are both material/objective and semiotic/ symbolic. Plummer (2014) explains that for interactionist theorists, what distinguishes human beings from all other higher primates is their ability to create and use symbols. “What sets off human beings from other animals is their elaborate semiotics: a symbol-producing capacity which enables them to produce a history, a culture, and very intricate webs of ambiguous communication.” (p.1) A central fulcrum around which interactionist sociology revolves is meaning. The construction, use, and negotiation of meaning in social intercourse or interaction constitute a major focal point in interactionist sociology. (2) The social world which humans create and inhabit is marked by fluid, flux, dynamic and constant, emergent change. “Lives, situations, even societies are always and everywhere evolving, adjusting, becoming.” (Plummer, 2014, p.1) It is this constant process that makes interactionists to focus on the strategies social actors use in “acquiring a sense of self, of developing a biography, of adjusting to others, of organizing a sense of time, of negotiating order, of constructing civilizations.” (p.1) (3) The multiple forms of interaction among social actors. Plummer (2014, p.1) maintains that the central concern of the paradigm is the joint acts of social actors through which lives are organized and societies assembled. In other words, the focus of all interactionists scholars is on collective behaviour, i.e., how social actors jointly create, recreate and shape their social worlds, rather than the individual nor the society per se. A central domain of the paradigm is the social self; how it is formed, shaped and, sustained in social acts and collective behaviors. Just as “one cannot be an islande unto himselfe”, to quote the English poet John Donne, the social self implies that the idea of “the other” is always present in a life: we can never be alone with a “self.” (Wiley, 1994). In short, the individual actor does not operate in a vacuum; the social other always impinges on the individual actor. Thus, collective behavior or joint actions by individual social actors constitute the main focus of Symbolic Interactionism. Plummer (2014, p.2) indicates that the very notion of “the individual,” indeed, is constructed through the other. At its core, Symbolic Interactionism is concerned with “how people do things together” (Becker, 1986). (4) Engagement with the objective, empirical world. A distinguishing characteristic of Symbolic Interactionism is its rootedness in the objective, empirical realm of social actors. While many other social theorists tend to bury their theoretical heads in the sky, Symbolic Interactionists plant their feet firmly in

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the terrestrial world; in the practical everyday world of social actors. Unlike many other social theorists “who soar to the theoretical heavens, symbolic interactionists stay grounded on earth.” (Plummer, 2014, p.2) The theoretical playground of Symbolic Interactionism, as it were, is the here-and-now social world, which can be explored in multiple ways by symbolic interactionists. Blumer (1969: 47) explains the focus on the world better. He observes: Symbolic interactionism is a down-to-earth approach to the scientific study of human group life and human conduct. Its empirical world is the natural world of such group life and conduct. It lodges its problems in this natural world, conducts its studies in it, and derives its interpretations from such naturalistic studies. If it wishes to study religious cult behavior it will go to actual religious cults and observe them carefully as they carry on their lives. If it wishes to study social movements it will trace carefully the career, the history and the life experiences of actual movements. If it wishes to study drug use among adolescents it will go to the actual life of such adolescents to observe and analyze such use. And similarly with respect to other matters that engage its attention. Its methodological stance, accordingly, is that of direct examination of the empirical world….

Briefly Sociologists are interested in what happens between individuals. Psychologists study what happens within the individual. Psychology focuses on the characteristics and behaviours of the social actor. The unit of study is the individual. Psychological Social psychologists study the social actor in group settings, emphasizing the behaviour of the individual within the group and how the immediate setting affects the perceptions and behaviour of the social actor. Sociological social psychologists focus more on the impact of groups on individual behaviour than on the individual social actor.

All the four parts are interconnected. The material world is a social and interactive process. Humans assign meanings to things in the objective world. They do so as they interact with other human actors. For any human interaction to be successful, people must assign shared meanings to the objects and symbols they encounter in the physical world. Objects and symbols, such as cars, trees, birds, the Star of David, the Crucifix took on their specific meanings according to how they are handled in joint actions. Meaning itself is a social and “interactive process - it emerges out of interactions.” (Plummer,

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2014, p.3) The self is not the body or physical part of us (the tissue). Rather, it is a social, emergent process “built out of encounters and endowed with shifting meaning.” (Plummer, p.3) It emerges, changes, and transforms only in joint actions with other selves. The social aspect of meaning endowment is fundamental in any human interaction. Thus, from micro groups (dyads, triads) to macro social organizations (families and whole societies) shared meanings are constantly created, recreated, contested and negotiated to facilitate interaction. In the same fashion, the self and other selves are constantly created, recreated, contested, negotiated and renegotiated in fluid, dynamic contexts. Which makes Plummer (2014, p.4) to conclude: “Societies are a vast matrix of ‘social worlds’ constituted through the symbolic interactions of ‘self’ and ‘others.’ Only in the grounded empirical world open to observation can self, encounter, social object, meaning, be investigated. There is, then, behind symbolic interactionist sociologies a pervasive imagery - of symbol, process, interaction, and intimate familiarity.”

Metatheory A metatheory is a set of interlocking rules, principles, or a story (narrative), that both describes and prescribes what is acceptable and unacceptable as theory the means of conceptual exploration - in a scientific discipline.

Symbolic Interactionism as a Scion of Sociological Social Psychology We are what we think. We do what we think. Each one of us is a captain of the ship of his or her destiny and at the same time victims of circumstances. While these observations may seem to be simple truisms, they are indeed are deceptively so. We are indeed what we think—our thinking processes reveal to others who we are as we act out our thoughts in our interactions with other individuals. But thinking is not an isolated individual action. Thinking is social; it is enacted jointly with others. It takes place in social settings. Even introspection (thinking alone) is a social act. We think about someone, some group of people, a certain kind of situation or situations. Even when we are thinking about ourselves, we do so in relation to others—what is this person thinking/saying about me? How will she or she think about what I am going to tell him or her? How many times haven’t you heard parents tell their children: “You can do whatever you want to do if you put your mind to it”? Which reminds me of my otherwise funny conversation with my college classmate. We were debating the “We are captains of the ships of our destinies versus we are victims of circumstances propositions after a sociology lecture. I told him with tongue in cheek that I was deeply in love with Princess Diana and that I had

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put mind to it for a long time. Needless to say, our debate did not go very far. This shows how such blanket statements and admonishments, devoid of contexts, are merely wishful thinking rather than based on reality. Sociologists who study society from the Symbolic Interactionism perspective attempt to offer more nuanced and complex explanations of individual behavior. This chapter will shed some light on these explanations. Symbolic interactionism falls within the Sociological Social Psychology metatheory. Before we define Symbolic Interactionism (SI), let us briefly explore the Sociological Social Psychology metatheory and explain the difference between this meta-theory and the Psychological Social Psychology metatheory. A metatheory is a set of interlocking rules, principles, or a story (narrative), that both describes and prescribes what is acceptable and unacceptable as theory - the means of conceptual exploration - in a scientific discipline. Ritzer (1992) identified the following characteristics of a metatheory: (a) identifying major cognitive paradigms and schools of thought that are represented in both the theoretical frameworks and the emerging theory of selected research reports; (b) relating the theory to the larger sociocultural, historical, and political context; and (c) deconstructing the implications of significant assumptions underlying specific theories. We use metatheory in the context to mean major or main theory. Within a metatheory are “minitheories” or sub-theories. Sociological Social Psychology is a field of study or metatheory within the discipline of sociology. As the name suggests, it is a sociological version of social psychology in psychology. Sociological social psychology focuses on understanding two kinds of social phenomena: (1) the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors (the ABC=Affect, Cognition and Behaviour) of social actors and (2) the relationships of these feelings, thoughts and behaviors to the social context in which they occur. (Crawford and Novak, 2014, p.4) This is an ever-expanding field whose principal objective is to bridge the gap between the sociological and psychological approaches to explaining and understanding human behavior. While sociologists are interested, as it were, in what happens between individuals, psychologists seek to unravel what happens within the individual social actor. As a discipline, psychology focuses on the characteristics and behaviors of the social actor. The unit of study is the individual. Social psychologists from the psychological metatheoretical tradition (Psychological Social psychologists) study the social actor in group settings, but the focus is more on the individual actor than it is on the group. They emphasize the behavior of the individual within the group and how the immediate setting affects the perceptions and behavior of the social actor. Social psychologists from the sociological orientation (Sociological Social psychologists) also study the individual’s place and behavior within groups, but their focus is more on the impact of groups on individual behavior. Addi-

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tionally, they locate the groups within the larger society. (Crawford and Novak, 2014, p.4)

Briefly Psychologists emphasize such topics as conformity, interpersonal attraction, the attribution of causality, aggression, altruistic behavior, and attitudes and their impact on behavior.

The Psychology in Sociology: Tracing the Roots of Sociological Social Psychology The term social psychology evinces ambiguity for many. Some of the ambiguity in the term stems from its use in differing but partially overlapping ways in two disciplines. Psychology and sociology have shared custody of the term since 1908, when two books were published, each with social psychology in its title. One, written by the psychologist William McDougall, argued that to understand how human beings are affected by society, it is necessary to study what he called the "native basis of the mind.” -Like other scholars of that era, McDougall relied on the concept instinct. He believed that it was necessary to discover the "innate tendencies of thought and action" that characterize human beings in order to explain the influences of society on them. The other book, by sociologist Edward A. Ross, placed more emphasis on social forces, arguing that certain processes come into existence because human beings associate with one another. Ross felt that the spread of fads and fashions, for example, cannot be explained simply by the nature and structure of the individual mind. The very fact of human association creates processes that cannot be reduced to the study of individuals. -McDougall and Ross sounded themes that can still be heard in the work of social psychologists, for the members of each discipline are still oriented to their own traditions of theory, ways of doing research, and basic images of human behavior. Psychologists do not deny that social and cultural forces shape the environment within which such basic psychological processes as learning, cognition, or emotion take place. But their main interest is in the processes themselves rather than in their social setting. As a result, psychological social psychologists make the individual their main unit of analysis. Sociologists, on the other hand, seek to describe and explain patterns of conduct among larger aggregates of people-groups, communities, social classes, and even whole societies. Without denying the importance of the mind or of processes that

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operate at the individual level, sociological social psychologists give priority to human association and make society the beginning point of their analysis. A look at the typical theoretical and research interests of psychological and sociological social psychologists will clarify the similarities and differences in their approaches. Psychologists emphasize such topics as conformity, interpersonal attraction, the attribution of causality, aggression, altruistic behavior, and attitudes and their impact on behavior. Conformity—on how the group shapes the thoughts and actions of individuals—has been a favorite topic. Studies of conformity have asked, for example, under what circumstances social actors can be induced to change their opinions or to adopt a judgment they know to be wrong merely because group pressures are applied to them. In the classic experiments of Solomon Asch, subjects were induced to misjudge the relative length of lines (a task that should be a matter of objective judgment) by pressures to agree with the erroneous judgments of confederates of the experimenter. The confederates intentionally gave wrong answers in an effort to induce the real subjects to conform to their opinions. In his studies of obedience, Stanley Milgram found that he could readily induce people to obey directions that required them to inflict apparent harm upon others. Milgram showed that he could create laboratory conditions in which subjects would administer what they believed were electric shocks to other subjects, even over their strong protests and expressions of pain. The shocks were not real, of course, but the experiment was carefully staged to create the impression that they were. Although psychological social psychologists conduct much of their research in a social setting, they typically focus on individual behavior. They have little interest in culture or in the ways in which individual conduct is socially organized and directed. The approach is summed up in Gordon Allport's classic definition of social psychology as the "attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others." Sociologists approach social psychology differently. Many sociological social psychologists study the same topics as psychologists-topics such as interpersonal attraction, causal attribution, and the relationship between attitudes and behavior. But they are also interested in a broader range of phenomena, including social roles, processes and contexts of socialization, justice and injustice, social movements and collective behavior, deviance and social control, self and identity, and the social psychology of such substantive topics as health, work, and social mobility. In their work in such areas, sociological social psychologists focus on the social world itself, treating social structure, culture, social roles, groups, organizations, and collective behavior not simply as environments within which individuals behave, but also as crucial levels of

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reality in their own right. Their ultimate goal is not to explain what individuals do and why they do it, but to understand how organized social life is possible, how it works, and how it changes over time. The theory of socialization, for example, is of very great importance in sociological social psychology. But sociologists are not typically interested in how individuals learn what they learn, but in the content of socialization, the social contexts (groups such as the family or peers and organizations such as the school) in which it occurs, and the nature of the process as it occurs at different periods in life. A sociological study of socialization by peers during adolescence, for example, might examine the nature of the friendship bond and explore the kinds of learning that occur in this relationship. In his study of the socializing influences of friends, Gary Alan Fine discovered that the relatively egalitarian and tolerant nature of adolescent friendship provides a context in which the social skills of self-presentation and impression management can be practiced and mastered. Such studies focus on what transpires between people rather than within the person, and they pay considerable attention to the wider social and cultural context in which conduct occurs. There is little to be gained by arguing about which approach to social psychology is the better one. -The disciplines of psychology and sociology have both common and different goals. Sociologists can find much of value in psychologists' studies of conformity, person perception, causal attribution, obedience, leadership, and the many other topics they pursue. Indeed, the interests of psychological and sociological social psychologists frequently overlap to the point where each can gain by attending to the research and theory of the other. Yet the sociologist also finds limitations in psychological social psychology. Because much of their work ignores the facts of cultural variation, psychologists are prone to create culture-bound, ethnocentric explanations of human conduct. And because they often focus on the individual in the microscopic social context of the laboratory or small group, ignoring the much larger framework of social institutions, power, and other constraints that affect human conduct, they can seem naive and inattentive with respect to issues of power',' coercion, freedom, and other matters with which sociologists are concerned. Throughout this book, we will look at the symbolic interactionist perspective, which provides a distinctively sociological way of understanding human social conduct and group life. Although its concerns are not limited to social psychology—for it regards culture and social structure as critical phenomena—symbolic interactionism is centrally concerned with the issues that have preoccupied social psychologists. Among the several approaches to social psychology that sociologists have used, it is the one most identified with sociology and best suited to the needs of the discipline.

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We can begin to understand the distinctive perspective of symbolic interactionism by examining the sociological view of the relationship between the person and the social world. At the heart of this relationship is a paradox. Briefly stated, the paradox is this: Only individuals act. Everything else society, culture, social structure, power, groups, organizations-is ultimately dependent on the acts of individuals. Yet individuals can act only because they acquire the capacity to do so as members of a society, which is the source of their knowledge, language, skills, orientations, and motives. Individuals are born into and shaped by a society that already exists and that will persist long after they are dead, yet that same society owes its existence and continuity to the conduct of its members. This paradoxical relationship between individual and society leads to some difficult questions: How does the individual acquire from society the capacity to be an active, functioning member? -Indeed, what does the individual acquire-what skills, knowledge, orientations, and motives? How do the individual and cooperative acts of its socialized members create and sustain a society? How can society shape the very individuals on whose actions its existence depends, and how can it live on when its members die? How can we say that people create society if they are created by it? Questions such as these are particularly important because, in the sociological view, biologically programmed instincts or drives have been supplanted by learning as the most important factors underlying human behavior. The human world is primarily cultural, and human conduct is shaped by the knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and ways of living held in common by the members of society. Thus, an orderly and persisting society is not guaranteed by our biological programming, but by what we have learned. And, by the same token, individuals are not guided by instinct, but must themselves rely on society and culture for their own survival. Simply to assert that behavior is culturally transmitted is not to explain how culture actually influences or shapes individual conduct. Human sexual behavior, for example, is profoundly influenced by culture. What human beings find sexually arousing, the situations in which they find it so, and the choice of others with whom to engage in sexual activity are not matters of human nature, but of cultural patterning. But how does culture shape human sexual attitudes and conduct? How does what we learn about sexual activity work its way into our sexual behavior? Sociologists have adopted varied attitudes toward the problem of linking society and culture to actual conduct. Some have argued that our attention should be focused on culture and social structure rather than on conduct itself. Those who adopt this position argue that patterns of conduct are so profoundly determined by culture and social structure that the question of how these forces actually shape behavior can safely be ignored. After all, they

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assert, much of social life is quite routine: People perform the same tasks over and over, the situations and social relationships in which they find themselves are pretty much the same from one day to the next, and their culture essentially provides ready-made ways of behaving. As a result, explaining how culture and society actually shape conduct is less interesting and important than explaining the origins and persistence of cultural patterns and social structures. Sociologists who adopt this point of view have developed numerous concepts designed to describe and help explain social phenomena. To take but one example, the concept of social class refers to the fact that societies are typically divided into segments whose members have a similar position in the division of labor, comparable education and incomes, and similar views of themselves and their place in the world. One social class, for example, might consist of small business owners, another of manual workers, and other of factory owners. In each case, the similarities are likely to be greater among the members of the class than between the members of that class and those of another. Class is a structural concept; its focus is on the patterned and repetitive conduct and social relationships that can be observed within and between various groups in a society at any given point in history.

Briefly A theory of action can be based on a great variety of theoretical perspectives. The theory to be developed here—symbolic interactionism—has been influential, and often controversial, within sociology.

A structural perspective has many attractive features. Human social life is highly repetitive, and it is often necessary to look beyond the details of individual behavior and its formation in order to see patterns and regularities. Moreover, although society ultimately depends upon the conduct of individuals, their actions and interactions typically have consequences they do not foresee and frequently do not recognize. The everyday actions of people as they work, eat and drink, play, make love, socialize, vote, take walks, and attend meetings do seem powerfully influenced by social class, and these actions have the cumulative effect of sustaining and reproducing class structures, even though people do not necessarily intend to do so nor recognize that they are doing so. There are also limitations, however, in looking only at social and cultural patterns and regularities. -Social life is highly repetitive, but it is not totally so, for patterns change over time, sometimes slowly and sometimes quite dramatically and quickly.

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The social division of labor between men and women in the contemporary United States or Canada, for example, is not the same as it was a century ago. Men and women of today inherit social roles and images of one another that were crafted during the nineteenth century but have been periodically modified since then. Although some still believe women should be confined to the domestic sphere because they lack the political or intellectual skills for public life, the majority now reject those beliefs. In part because of the women's movement, which challenged such ideas, what once seemed to many to be an eternal fact now seems antiquated; and patterns that once seemed entrenched have changed. The fact of social change makes it difficult to regard human conduct as simply determined by existing forms of society and culture. We must look at it as shaped not only by these external forces but also by the efforts of people who work within, and sometimes against, an inherited culture and existing social arrangements. People are not thoroughly and passively socialized to accept and reproduce culture and society, for under many circumstances they resist and rebel, finding ways to escape from the patterns of conduct that are urged upon them. They are not merely agents of an existing social order but also active agents who create and change that order. A great many sociologists, therefore, do not believe that they can concentrate on social structure and culture and ignore conduct. They recognize that they must have a basic theory of action—that is, an account of how people actually form their conduct in everyday life that can be related to the society and culture their conduct both sustains and modifies. The main task of social psychology is to create such a theory of action. Its job is to examine the details of action and interaction, to show how people are influenced by society and culture, but also to show how their everyday actions both sustain and change these larger realities. To do so, the social psychologist must concentrate on such topics as socialization, the nature of the person, and the actual formation of conduct in everyday life. At the same time, however, culture and social structure cannot be ignored: The person is created and transformed, and everyday life takes place, within a framework provided by society and culture. A theory of action can be based on a great variety of theoretical perspectives. The theory to be developed here—symbolic interactionism—has been influential, and often controversial, within sociology. The starting point of all sociology is the individual. All theorizing begin in the micro world of the individual before transitioning to the macro world of social structure. Thus, even those classical theorists we have come to know as macro and structural theorists were also micro sociologists, sociological social psychologists to be more precise. The starting point in theorizing for all theorists of all orientations is with concepts. The concepts are then deployed to

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develop macro-sociological theories. For example, known mostly as a macro and structural sociologist, Marx propounded his now famous study of capitalism beginning with a micro concept, the commodity. Emile Durkheim similarly begins his numerous structural and macro theorizing from the micro realm. He begins his study of suicide with a concept — social facts. While Durkheim rejected the prevalent “psychologism” of his era, it is important to note that did not entirely dismiss the micro-universe. Like Marx and Weber, Durkheim did not treat the individual as a dunce. He asserts that individuals have a dual nature; their mental process contains individual characteristics mingled with the effects of collective representations; most of the representations within individual minds have been collectively produced. These collective representations arise from the interaction of innumerable minds considered as a totality, as a whole from whose activities these representations emerge. Marx and Weber stressed the importance of human agency. For Marx, humans were active, living beings, embodied, sensuous, conscious, with feelings and emotions, and with inherent dispositions and capacities, as well as being. This meant, of course, for Marx, that any understanding of human social life (or history) must begin with one basic premise: namely, the existence of human individuals, and the fact of their inter-relationship with the rest of nature. It was through their productive relations, their creative interactions with nature to meet then-basic needs, that humans produced 2 their material life, or what Marx described as their “modes of life.” Marx identified three distinct human ‘natures’; (a) as a species-being, a human nature (or identity) with essential needs, powers, capacities, and a history;(b) as a ‘communal being’ or ‘an ensemble of social relations’ (as Marx put it), a person who enacted specific social roles and expressed certain social identities; and (c) as an individual being, a self with a unique personality and subjective and moral agency. As a humanist, Marx emphasized the ‘individuality’ of the human person, and the fundamental importance of human freedom. To him, the self-determination and the self-expression of the individual were core and inalienable values. But Marx recognized and stressed that such freedom could only be achieved by the creation, through collective practice and struggle, of a truly socialist society, for humans were fundamentally social beings. Freedom, 3 for Marx, was social, not metaphysical. Weber, for his part, focused on the social actor, his or her uniqueness as an individual, and interaction among social actors at the individual and small group level. Weber (1947, p. 88) asserted that “sociology is a science which [should] attempt the interpretative understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its causes and effects”. As Ritzer (2000, p. 9) argued, Weber “thought that distinctive characteristics of social life made wholesale adoption of a scientific model difficult and unwise”. Such

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positivistic approach could not analyze and delve into how people make sense of their realities. This requires a different approach to understating human action. By “action”, Weber (1947, p. 88) referred to “all human behavior when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to it”. An acting individual takes account of the behavior of other (See intersubjectivity). Weber used the term Verstehen to highlight his approach to sociological action. Verstehen refers to the observation and theoretical interpretation of the subjective ‘state of mind’ of actors”. For him, a sociological analysis must account for how social actors make sense of their social surroundings in the contexts of the constraints and opportunities that social structures provide (or do not provide) them. Weber (1947, p. 103) concluded that in social sciences we can achieve an important goal that is not attainable in the natural sciences, “namely the subjective understanding of the actions of the component individuals”.

Box 2:1 - Max Weber: The Multidisciplinary Scholar Max Weber was a multidisciplinary scholar. Throughout his illustrious career as a sociologist, he developed a distinctive approach to sociological analysis. His approach in a wide range of substantive areas, economic sociology, stratification, complex organizations, sociology of religion, authority, and social change, still guides modern research and theory. Weber influenced structural functionalists, conflict theorists, and symbolic interactionists, a fact that testifies to his wide range of interest in macro- and micro-sociological issues. One of the main characteristics of Weber's scholarship was his criticism of economic determinist analysis. Economic determinism is the idea that the economy trumps everything else in society. The economy, according to economic determinists, is the fundamental determinant and driver of human behavior. Grabb (2002, p. 41) maintained that Marx and the Marxist during the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century “argued that ideas and beliefs are wholly products of social interaction and organization, especially within the sphere of economic production”. According to Grabb (2002, p. 41), Weber disagreed with this materialist view, arguing that it failed to take into account the possibility that “ideas could themselves influence and even generate economic structures and behavior, rather than being mere consequences of these material forces”. He, for example, studied the origin of capitalism in Western societies during the period between sixteenth and seventeenth century, and asked why capitalism did not originate in other parts of the world. He asserted that certain changes in technology, such as the introduction of machines with new sources of energy like steam power, the mechanization of farming in addition to changes in land use and its privatization, the introduction of new accounting systems, and the factory system were influential in the rise of capitalism. While not discounting economic sources of human behaviour and social develop-

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ment, Weber also focused on non-economic factors in order to offer a more comprehensive understanding of the rise of capitalism in modernity. In his research, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he showed how ideas can play an important and effective role in history (Grabb, 2002, p. 50). He investigated how changes in Western European economic organizations were related to and influenced by the new religious belief system. As Weber argued, the aim of those that brought about the Protestant Reformation was not to create a new economic system. Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-64) were critical of the corrupt power of the Catholic Church. They introduced a new way of religiosity. In their view, each man/woman needed to reach God individually and not through the sacraments that were offered (administered) by the Church. They maintained that people should have direct access to the words of God (not only through the priests as representative of the Church). They promoted the idea that the Bible should be available in different languages, which resulted in the breakdown of the Church’s control over interpreting the scripture for the masses. In their view, one would achieve salvation through personal faith and hard work, which was considered as a way to show one’s devotion to God. Savings and investment were also encouraged, and unnecessary consumption was frowned upon. These qualities were viewed as important, which formed the basis of The Protestant Work Ethic. In this sense, Weber pointed out that (religious) ideas were also significant in the development of capitalism as a system of economic exploitation. In other words, hard-work, deferred gratification, and individual responsibility became the central defining characteristics of modern individuals. In this sense, work was re-conceptualized as a “spiritual vocation”. In addition, the Protestant belief system promoted a life of frugality and avoidance of luxury and instant gratification. In this way, saving and reinvestment were encouraged over consumption of expensive products. As Weber pointed out, some of the most successful capitalist in the United States were from “those of ascetic Protestant backgrounds” (Grabb, 2002, p. 43). Weber’s main contribution to Symbolic Interaction is his action theory. Action theory describes the subjective factors that influence human action and serve as the foundation for society. In developing his theory, Weber distinguished between the concepts of behavior and action. Behavior, he postulated, was an automatic response that occurred with little thought, whereas action was the result of a conscious process in which people gave meaning to their actions and the world around them. Weber was concerned only with the study of action and believed that the sociologist could understand the meaningful basis of peoples' actions through the method of “empathic understanding”, or verstehen . Verstehen or empathy is necessary for social interaction to be successful. In a given social interaction, interlocutors must attempt to put themselves in the shoes of their co-interlocutors. For example, in a typical lecture, the instructor endeavors to put herself in the shoes of her students by “descending to their level” and the students try to “rise to the level of the instructor, as it were. Without empathy interaction becomes problematic or impossible. Sociologists delineate two types of empathy, namely (1): affective empathy and (2)

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cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy reflects Charles Wright Mills’ sociological imagination. Cognitive empathy denotes one’s ability to identify and understand other people’s emotions. The sociological imagination is the ability to understand the perspective of other social actors. It refers to an alertness, capacity, ability, and a quality of mind that allows an individual to understand and connect her or his life with the forces (the human interactions, social structures and events) that impact it.

Box 2.2 - Max Weber Max Weber defined sociology “as the interpretive understanding of social action” (Wotherspoon, 1998, p. 5). In order to understand behavior, he maintained, social scientists must understand the range of meanings people associate to their actions. Weber promoted the idea that the aim of sociology should be to construct a framework for understanding and interpreting human social actions. He pointed out that external forces, such as coercive social structures, are not the only factors that needed to be accounted for in understanding human behavior. Scholars must also be concerned with the motivations of human beings, as they act and behave in the context of social structures and become involved in social interactions. In other words, sociology must account for how people’s decisions and behaviors are determined by interpretation (Wotherspoon, 1998, p. 5). Any social explanation must take into consideration “those additional subjective aspects of social life: the meanings people attach to their actions, the idea that governs their behavior, and their consciousness and perceptions of the world around them” (Grabb, 2002, p. 48). As such, it would be possible to predict certain subjective attitudes and their consequences: Weber called this rational action, or “the calculated pursue of individuals interest’. This was possible, he insisted, since, in a capitalist society, for example, the main goal is to increase one’s profit. That is “subjective interests are geared almost completely to the profit motive or the maximization of wealth” (Grabb, 2002, p. 49). Weber also emphasized the importance of social structures and the centrality of analysis of systems of social life and their consequences on human action. In order to better understand why certain events happen or why people act in the ways in which they do in the context of their interactions in social institutions, sociologist should “seek social explanations by means of ‘a pluralistic analysis of factors, which may be isolated and gauged in terms of their respective causal weights” (as cited in Grabb, 2002, p. 47). This is referred to as causal pluralism (Grabb, 2002, p. 47).

Although there is a strong tendency to divide sociology into macro and micro perspectives, it is important to note that, as Ritzer (2000, p. 494) argued, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and George Simmel, the main influencers of sociological theories during its early years (1800-1920s), “were generally concerned with the micro-macro linkages. Marx was interested in the coercive and alienating effects of capitalist society on individual workers (and capitalists)”. Weber, on the other hand, focused on “the plight of the individu-

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al within the iron cage of a formally rational society”, and Simmel was interested in the interplay between objective (macro) and subjective (micro) cultures (Ritzer, 2000, p. 494). In fact, Ritzer (2000, p. 494) pointed out that Emile Durkheim was also interested in the effects of macro-level factors (social facts) on the behaviors of individuals. A satisfactory framework for analyzing the social world, then, must include both elements of macro and micro sociology. This framework “must be able to move from the level of the person to that of large-scale social structure and back again” (Stryker, as cited in Ritzer, 2000, p. 375). Social structures, as elements that define and limit what people should and can do, are not static. Although social structures exist above and beyond individuals, it is only through human interactions that these structures are reproduced, or altered, changed, and replaced with new forms that will in turn influence how people think, behave, and act. Knowledge about society is more useful and meaningful when these two approaches are integrated and combined (Ritzer, 2000, p. 495).

Briefly Sociology is the “scientific” study of human relationships and behavior.

The Sociological Perspective Sociologists study what happens between individual social actors, while psychologists basically study what happens within the individual. The sociological perspective offers the BIG picture of the individual’s place in society, setting a dialectical relationship between the individual social actor and other social actors and with the larger society. Sociology is defined as the “scientific” study of human relationships and behavior. “Science” refers to a process of developing theories that are tested and then rejected, modified, or retained until a more comprehensive theory is developed (Turner, 2003, p.2). The sociological perspective is a way of seeing the world that places people’s experiences within their social and historical context.” (Crawford and Novak, 2014, p.4) A central theme in sociology is how subgroup affiliations and mechanisms for empowerment influence one's vision of oneself, one's country, and the world. Exploring sociocultural differences, such as “race,” ethnicity, gender, and class provides insight into ongoing constraints and opportunities that shape the life chances of individuals and groups. A sociological approach to any of these differences begins with the assumption that social structures,

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the enduring systematic patterns of social interaction that order and constrain social life, and social institutions are human creations or social constructs. This means that subgroups or collectives, such as the family, are neither natural phenomena nor divinely created entities. They are human-made and tied to and vary significantly across time and place. It also means that these phenomena ultimately rest on supra-individual processes of group boundary formation, segregation, and the creation of inter-group (i.e., racial) hierarchies. Sociologists hold the view that social forces outside of the social actor (e.g., common thought and behavioral patterns within a given society) play a much greater role than idiosyncratic and nuanced individual characteristics (e.g., personality) do in shaping behavior. ((Crawford and Novak, 2014, p.5) The Spectrum of Social Psychology Social Psychology runs a spectrum from psychoanalytical through cognitive, behavioral to social learning and symbolic interactionism. For our purposes, we will limit our discussion to what James House described as the three faces of social psychology: psychological social psychology (PSP), symbolic interactionism (SI), and social structure and personality (SSP), plus a more recent addition to House’s typology, group processes and structures (GPS) (Crawford and Novak, 2014, p8)). Sociological social psychology downplays the importance of individual differences and the effects of immediate social stimuli on behavior. Instead, the focus tends to be on larger societal variables such a socioeconomic status, social roles, and cultural norms. The three Faces of Sociological Psychology Sociological Social Psychology is broken up into three distinct "faces": Social Structure and Personality, Group Processes, and Symbolic Interactionism (House, 1977). 1)

2)

3)

Social Structure and Personality focuses on the fact that all people occupy a position in the social system, and that position affects individuals through role expectations, social networks, and status. Group Processes is primarily interested in the discovery and analysis of general principles underlying groups across a variety of settings, and the interplay between the individual and group levels of analysis. Symbolic Interactionism's basic premise is that human nature and social order are products of communication among people. This book is primarily focused on symbolic interactionism.

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Symbolic Interactionism: A Brief Introduction

Tenets of Symbolic Interactionism a) b) c)

Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one's fellows These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters.

Briefly The three faces of social psychology are: psychological social psychology (PSP), symbolic interactionism (SI), and social structure and personality (SSP), plus a more recent addition to House’s typology, group processes and structures (GPS)

Psychological Social Psychology While this falls outside the scope of this book, we include it in this discussion for the purposes of comparison only. Psychological Social Psychologists are interested in the small-scale interactions of social actors. As mentioned above, they focus more on what is happening within the individual’s mind, his or her perceptions, cognition, emotions, and behavioral characteristics. They are also interested in the immediate context/environment of interaction, rather than the larger and more remote contexts. They test their theories in the laboratory situation. Theories they have used the laboratory to study include compliance, conformity, obedience, and social facilitation—how the presence of others influence behavior. Box 2:3 - Three Faces of Social Psychology: A Conceptual Framework

Focus

Psychological Social Psychology study of face-to-face social interaction -process of face-toface interaction (Goffman); socialization and development of self (Cooley)

Symbolic Interactionism study of face-to-face social interaction -process of face-to-face interaction (Goffman); socialization and development of self (Cooley)

Psychological Social Psychology “real world” concerns emphasis on macrosocial structure more mainstream sociology (related) -- impact of social class on self-image,

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personality, values; relation btw personality and performance of organizational roles; micro-macro links Theories

Methodology

Critique

Behavioral Perspective Social Learning Theory Social Exchange Theory Cognitive Perspective Field Theory Attitude Consistency and Attribution Contemporary Cognitive Theory Experimental

Symbolic Interaction Theory Identity Theory Everyday understandings and Dramaturgical approach Ethnomethodology

participant and sometimes non-participant observation coupled with formal interviewing

Role Theory Expectation States Theory Postmodernism

Quantitative methods survey research (often)

• need more • neglects • the social strucnon-experimental quantification & tural positions of methods scientific method individuals “ determine” • subjects not real • doesn’t incorporate personality & social actors macrosocial behavior concepts into • problem of external mechanically understanding of validity • no attention paid social interaction to micro social interpersonal relations &/or psy. processes thru which macrosocial structures come to have such effects

Chapter Summary •

Symbolic Interactionism was coined by Herbert Blumer to denote the study of the interaction as it takes place between human beings.

Symbolic Interactionism: A Brief Introduction

• •

• • •

•

•

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It is a theoretical framework or paradigm based on the assumption that social reality is created and recreated (continuously) through human interactions through the use of symbols. Human beings interpret or "define" each other's actions instead of merely reacting to each other's actions. Their "response" is not made directly to the actions of one another but instead is based on the meaning which they attach to such actions. Human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another's actions. Individuals are active constructors of their own conduct, interpret, evaluate, define, and map out their own action. The concept of mind has been reformulated to embrace –William Isaac Thomas’ definition of the situations. Thomas proposed that with the capacities of mind, actors can name, categorize, and orient themselves to constellations of objects—including themselves as objects—in all situations. In this way they can assess weigh, and sort out appropriate lines of conduct. Emphasis of the interactionist orientation is on: (a) the emergence of self-conceptions-relatively stable and enduring conceptions that people have about themselves; (b) the ability to derive self-imagespictures of oneself as an object in social situations. The self is thus a major object that people inject into their definitions of situations. Symbolic interactionism attempts to answer the following questions: 1) How are society and individual connected and linked?; 2) How do individual acts and social structures influence one another?”; 3) How are societies reproduced through the actions and interactions of its individual members?; and 4) How are the thoughts and actions of members of society influenced by the social st

Ritzer’s Seven Principles of Symbolic Interactionism •

All human understanding occurs by assigning meaning to experience.

•

Meanings are learned in interactions.

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All social structures and institutions are created by interaction between individuals.

•

Social realities are created and recreated by interaction.

•

Mind is a mirror of interaction between persons.

•

Behavior is enacted in the social group through interaction.

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•

Behavior can only be understood by ascertaining the individual's meanings for the behavior.

Language and thought arise out of people interacting with one another. Language and thought co-exist in a dynamic, interacting, and dialectical relationship. • • • •

•

• •

•

•

•

•

Human worlds are both material/objective and semiotic/ symbolic. The social world which humans create and inhabit is marked by fluid, flux, dynamic and constant, emergent change. Psychology focuses on the characteristics and behaviors of the social actor. The unit of study is the individual. Psychological Social psychologists study the social actor in group settings, emphasizing the behavior of the individual within the group and how the immediate setting affects the perceptions and behavior of the social actor. Psychologists emphasize such topics as conformity, interpersonal attraction, the attribution of causality, aggression, altruistic behavior, and attitudes and their impact on behavior. Sociological social psychologists focus more on the impact of groups on individual behavior than on the individual social actor A metatheory is a set of interlocking rules, principles, or a story (narrative), that both describes and prescribes what is acceptable and unacceptable as theory - the means of conceptual exploration - in a scientific discipline. In Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments, subjects were induced to misjudge the relative length of lines (a task that should be a matter of objective judgment) by pressures to agree with the erroneous judgments of confederates of the experimenter. The confederates intentionally gave wrong answers in an effort to induce the real subjects to conform to their opinions. In his studies of obedience, Stanley Milgram found that he could readily induce people to obey directions that required them to inflict apparent harm upon others. Many sociological social psychologists study the same topics as psychologists-topics such as interpersonal attraction, causal attribution, and the relationship between attitudes and behavior. But they are also interested in a broader range of phenomena, including social roles, processes and contexts of socialization, justice and injustice, social movements and collective behavior, deviance and social control, self and identity, and the social psychology of such substantive topics as health, work, and social mobility.

Symbolic Interactionism: A Brief Introduction

•

•

•

•

•

•

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Sociological social psychologists focus on the social world itself, treating social structure, culture, social roles, groups, organizations, and collective behavior not simply as environments within which individuals behave, but also as crucial levels of reality in their own right. Their ultimate goal is not to explain what individuals do and why they do it, but to understand how organized social life is possible, how it works, and how it changes over time. We can begin to understand the distinctive perspective of symbolic interactionism by examining the sociological view of the relationship between the person and the social world. At the heart of this relationship is a paradox: Only individuals act. Everything else society, culture, social structure, power, groups, organizations-is ultimately dependent on the acts of individuals. Yet individuals can act only because they acquire the capacity to do so as members of a society, which is the source of their knowledge, language, skills, orientations, and motives. Individuals are born into and shaped by a society that already exists and that will persist long after they are dead; yet that same society owes its existence and continuity to the conduct of its The Sociological Perspective

• • • •

• • •

Sociology is defined as the “scientific” study of human relationships and behavior. Social structures refer to those well-established large-scale and long-term patterns of organization. Status, role, value, norm, social institution, group, and organization are examples of social structures. Social structures are a set of social positions or a set of statuses that relate to one another, such as the relationship and expectations imposed on people who are labeled as doctor, nurse, and patient; or principal, teacher, parent, and student Ascribed statuses are assigned to the individuals and are not related to the innate characteristics of individuals Achieved statuses reflect the characteristics of individuals and their individual efforts Social institution refers to those patterns of beliefs and behavior that are organized and designed to satisfy human needs and wants. It is defined as organized interactions of sets of roles, social expectations, and statuses that are related and complementary to one another.

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• •

• •

• •

•

Value refers to conceptions of right and wrong within society. Norms refer to those rules, regulations, and behaviors that are universally observed by the members of society and have moral significance and consequences for the operation of society. Groups are organized people with shared norms and values. Formal Organizations are large specialized secondary groups that are structured to achieve maximum efficiency and predetermined and specific goals. The Spectrum of Social Psychology Social Psychology runs a spectrum from psychoanalytical through cognitive, behavioral to social learning and symbolic interactionism. The three faces of social psychology: psychological social psychology (PSP), symbolic interactionism (SI), and social structure and personality (SSP), plus a more recent addition to House’s typology, group processes and structures (GPS) (Crawford and Novak, 2014, p8)).

Chapter Three: Philosophical Sources and Intellectual Roots of Symbolic Interactionism Philosophical Sources Let’s now briefly explore the philosophical sources of symbolic interactionism. Sociologists have identified the major sources of the paradigm, namely, pragmatism, social behaviorism, and neo-Hegelianism. The intellectual origins of symbolic interactions can be attributed to the works of William James, George Simmel, John Dewey, Max Weber, and George Herbert Mead. Mead is believed to be the founder of the theory, although he did not publish any academic work on the paradigm. We can say that the intellectual heirs of symbolic interactionism are Herbert Blumer, Mead’s former student, who was instrumental in publishing the lectures his former professor posthumously with the title Symbolic Interactionism. Other intellectual heirs are Erving Goffman and Robert Park.

Briefly Pragmatism is underpinned by several premises. (1) Interaction between social actors and the world around them is central to developing human knowledge. (2) Interaction is not fixed or static, but is fluid and continually changing, (3) The social actor is flexible, and is endowed with creative powers to interpret the social world. (4) The unique characteristics of humans arise from the process of adjusting to their life conditions. (5) What is unique to humans is their capacity for thinking. (6) Mind entails the capacity to view of humans themselves as objects and to develop self-feelings and attitudes toward themselves.

As Gingrich (2013) has noted, the symbolic interaction approach took its roots in the United States by social scientists who were pragmatists and behaviorists. “Pragmatism is probably the most distinctive American school of philosophy. Dominant in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century, pragmatism stressed an open-ended and practical conception of truth.” (Knapp, 1994, p. 180, as cited in Gingrich, 2013) A central assumption

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of pragmatism is that” [social] reality is not "out there" in the world, but exists only as it is actively created by individuals in the world.” Gingrich, 2013, p.6 Pragmatism As we noted above, one of the main philosophical foundations of symbolic interactionism was pragmatism, the process of human adjustment to the world, in which humans constantly seek to master the conditions of their environment. Symbolic Interactionism was developed as a system of thought and theory to combat behaviorism. Pragmatism is underpinned by several premises. (1) Interaction between social actors and the world around them is central to developing human knowledge. (2) Interaction is not fixed or static, but is fluid and continually changing, (3) The social actor is flexible and is endowed with creative powers to interpret the social world. (4) The unique characteristics of humans arise from the process of adjusting to their living conditions. (5) What is unique to humans is their capacity for thinking. (6) Mind entails the capacity to view of humans themselves as objects and to develop self-feelings and attitudes toward themselves. Pragmatism proposes that humans can: (a) denote symbolically other people and aspects of the world around them; (b) develop attitudes and feelings toward these objects; (c) construct typical responses toward objects, so they can express themselves, develop self-feelings and attitudes, and construct responses toward themselves. These capacities lead to the forming of the self. (Wallace & Wolf, 2006) The philosophical pragmatism of John Dewey and William James was influential on the early proponents of symbolic interactionism, including Mead, Blumer, and indeed contemporary ones. To pragmatists, nothing is permanent and there are no absolutes in life; everything is relative to the needs and interests of individual social actors. Founders: The leading proponents of pragmatists include Jane Addams, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Dewey, William James, Alain Locke, George Herbert Mead, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, and Alfred North Whitehead John Dewey’s Pragmatism John Dewey (1859-1952) was a distinguished American writer and a professor at Columbia University. The main assumptions of Dewey’s writings are the following: (1) All types of human activity are instruments that are developed to solve the multiple problems humans face, (2) There is no eternal truth; instead, truth is based on experience, testable and verifiable by all who investigate it, (3) The human mind was not just a thing or a structure, but an active process by which the individual imagines, interprets, decides, defines, and acts in the world. According to Gingrich (2013), Dewey sought to create principles for a democratic and industrial society. An ardent opponent of authori-

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tarian methods in education, he developed a student-centered pedagogical blueprint for educators. . As founding president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Dewey was an important intellectual influence in American life. (Knapp, 1994, p. 180 and Columbia Encyclopedia, p. 756 as cited in Gingrich, 2013). Dewey (1993) stated that humans are practical and come to terms with actual conditions of their world, and cope with that world. All humans seek a niche with which to adapt. Dewey who described his pragmatism “instrumentalism,” encouraged people to find processes that work in order to achieve their desired ends…action oriented, experientially grounded, Pragmatists believe that reality is constantly changing and that we learn best through applying our experiences and thoughts to problems, as they arise (Dewey, 1933) Dewey proposed that there is no absolute and unchanging truth, but rather, truth is what works. Only those things that are experienced or observed are real. To pragmatists, truth, reality, goodness, and badness are all relative terms. They are proved by man’s own experiences. John Dewey’s ideas also influenced the symbolic interactionists approach to understanding mind. For Dewey, mind was not a structure. Mind was a thinking process that was composed of several stages. The First stage involved defining the object. The second stage involves delineating possible means of conduct (Ritzer, 2000, p. 338). In the third stage, social actors consider and imagine the consequences of the different actions that are open to them. The last stage includes choosing the best way of action that is optimal (Ritzer, 2000, p. 338). John Dewey is labeled a nominalist pragmatist. Nominalists do not reject the existence of macrostructures in society. However, they argue that these macrostructures do not determine the consciousness of social actors. Social actors are conceived as being endowed with free wills, “who accept, reject, modify, or otherwise define the community’s norms, roles, beliefs” based on self-interests and pre-conceived plans (as cited in Ritzer, 2000, p. 338). In contrast, Mead’s ideas about the self, some critiques maintained, was more influenced by philosophical realism, which claims that the emphasis of analysis should be on society and the extent to which society determines and influences the mental process of social actors (Ritzer, 2000, p. 339). In this view, social actors are not really free agents but their ways of thinking and actions are influenced by their communities (Ritzer, 2000, p. 339). William James’ Typology of Selves William James (1842-1910) taught at Harvard and wrote about psychology and philosophy. His primary goal was to develop moral and ethical principles for meaning and truth that depend on the definite difference these make to people (Knapp, 1994, p. 180). Three central premises underpin his work: (1) Con-

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sciousness is active, selective, and interested, (2) Direct experience is an especially important aspect of this, and (3) Ideas are not absolutes, but are a way of preparing for and anticipating experiences. According to James self has multiple components, which he called typologies of selves. The first is the material self which entails the physical objects that humans view as part of their being and as crucial to their identity. The second is the social self. This is the selffeelings that individuals derive from associations with other people. The third is the spiritual self, which denotes the general cognitive style and capacities typifying an individual. This typology was never adopted by subsequent interactionists, but James' notion of the social self, became a part of all interactionists' formulations (Ritzer, 2000). Let’s briefly summarize the symbolic interactionist paradigm: (a) Humans create and use symbols; (b) Humans communicate with symbols; (c) Humans interact through role taking, which involves the reading of symbols emitted by others; (d) What makes humans unique as a species is the existence of mind and the self, which arise from interaction; (e) conversely, the emergence of these capacities allows for the interactions that form the basis of society. Behaviorism Behaviorism derives from the primes that reinforcement guides and directs human action. Behaviorism is a branch of positivism; refutes philosophy of Descartes and other nativists that people's most basic ideas were innate/inborn. Behaviorists are committed to strictly empiricist view of social behavior. The basic assumptions are (1) :human learning comes about as a result of conditioning, (2) human behaviour and learning involve a stimulus in the natural environment, (3) this stimulus functions to elicit a particular response, (4) the response or behaviour, then, can be scientifically controlled by identifying the specific stimulus and manipulating it. Behaviorists proceed from the premise that humans are not active and creative beings. According to Skinner, one of the founders of behaviorism, a person does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him/[her]." Skinner. Assuming the hedonistic principle, according to which people pursue pleasure and avoid pain, Skinner reasons that human beings engage in behavior that affords pleasure and avoids those that promise pain. In this model, pleasure acts as a reward (positive reinforcer) and is used to explain the persistence of certain behaviors, while pain is seen as punishment (negative reinforcer) that leads to the extinction of other behaviors. Thus behaviorism is an antithesis to traditional psychologies, which emphasize conscious states/inner cognitive or mental states of human beings. The goal of behaviorists is to predict and control overt behavior. The chief proponents of the behaviorist paradigm are J.B. Watson and B.F. Skinner.

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As mentioned above, behaviorism is antithetical to traditional psychological theories, including the cognitive theory focus on mental activities of normal human beings in shaping their conduct. Its main assumptions are (1) individual members of society are active receivers of sensory input. (2) Their behavioral responses to such external stimuli [i.e. sensory inputs] are shaped by inner mental [cognitive] processes. (3) Cognitive processes enable people to transform input in various ways; code it, store it, interpret it selectively, distort it, and retrieve it for later use. Cognitive processes involve perception, imagery, belief systems, attitudes, values, tendencies, remembering, thinking, and other mental activities. Darwinism Symbolic Interactionism is also influenced by Darwinism, particularly, Meadan interactionism. Darwinism denotes a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859. According to Lennox (2014), Darwinism is set out as a series of causal elements that, working together, will produce the needed transformations. 1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Species are comprised of individuals that vary ever so slightly from each other with respect to their many traits. Species have a tendency to increase in size over generations at an exponential rate. This tendency, given limited resources, disease, predation, and so on, creates a constant condition of struggle for survival among the members of a species. Some individuals will have variations that give them a slight advantage in this struggle, variations that allow more efficient or better access to resources, greater resistance to disease, greater success at avoiding predation, and so on. These individuals will tend to survive better and leave more offspring. Offspring tend to inherit the variations of their parents. Therefore favorable variations will tend to be passed on more frequently than others, a tendency Darwin labeled ‘Natural Selection’. Over time, especially in a slowly changing environment, this process will cause the character of species to change. Given a long enough period of time, the descendant populations of an ancestor species will differ enough to be classified as different species, a process capable of indefinite iteration. There are, in addition, forces that encourage divergence among descendant populations, and the elimination of intermediate varieties.

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Intellectual Roots of SI Symbolic interactionism traces is intellectual roots as far back as midtwentieth century writings of the German sociologist, Max Weber (1864-1920) and the American philosopher, George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). Weber’s contribution to the interactionism was his ability to bridge the micro and macro perspectives and emphasis on verstehen (the German word for empathic understanding), or subjective meaning of human behavior, a concept Mead also adopted. In addition, both Weber and Mead believed that social reality should be seen as a dynamic social process. Both theorists underscored pragmatism as an important aspect of human interaction. We shall devote a considerable part of this chapter to the intellectual forerunners of the theory. We will also explore the contributions of two European progenitors of SI—Max Weber and Georg Simmel. Then we will devote the following three chapters to Canadian and American intellectual exponents of the paradigm, namely, Mead, Cooley, and Goffman. Max Weber: The Foremost Forerunners of Interactionism Max Weber is seen as a forerunner of interactionism thanks to his pioneering role in not only defining the social world as that of social action but also calling on sociologists to develop an understanding of how individuals act. Weber reasoned that each social action carries a meaning for the social actor. The social actor acts purposefully, but neither as an automaton or robot nor on the basis of instinct or stimulus. While conceding that some of the acts carried out by the social actor are conditioned or instinctive, a large part of what the social actor does derive from considered, reasoned and rational thought processes, which is tailored to the specific situation in which the action takes place. In other words, the social actor, far from acting automatically or impulsively, thinks about how to approach the situation, contemplate the possible actions of others, and acts in a way that he or she thinks will best meet his or her goals. As Wallace and Wolf (2011) have pointed out, the social actor’s action may be entirely a consciously worked out process, but to be considered as a social action, there must be some meaning associated with the action. Weber, therefore, tasked sociologists to attempt to see how people interpret and attribute meaning to the situation. He coined the term verstehen (empathy or introspective understanding) as a tool for the sociologist to carry out this task. (Gingrich 2013) Max Weber defined sociology “as the interpretive understanding of social action” (Wotherspoon, 1998, p.5). In order to understand behavior, he maintained, social scientists must understand the range of meanings people associate with their actions. Weber suggested that the aim of sociology should be to construct a framework for understanding and interpreting human social

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actions. He pointed out that social scientists must extend their examination of social reality beyond external forces, such as coercive social structures, to incorporate an understanding of human behaviors and motivations for those behaviors. In other words, sociology must account for how people’s decisions and behaviors are determined by interpretation (Wotherspoon, 1998, p. 5). Any social explanation must take into consideration “those additional subjective aspects of social life: the meanings people attach to their actions, the ideas that govern their behavior, and their consciousness and perceptions of the world around them” (Grabb, 2002, p. 48). As such, it would be possible to predict certain subjective attitudes and their consequences: Weber called this rational action, or “the calculated pursuit of individuals’ interest’. (See Mirfakharie and Quist-Adade, 2013) But, Weber was aware that focusing human action or rationality alone does not allow for a holistic understanding of social reality. He consequently called for attention to the impact of social structures and social systems on human action. In order to better understand why certain events happen or why people act in the ways they do in the context of their interactions in social institutions, sociologists should “seek social explanations by means of ‘a pluralistic analysis of factors, which may be isolated and gauged in terms of their respective causal weights” (as cited in Grabb, 2002, p. 47). This is referred to as causal pluralism (Grabb, 2002, p. 47). To illustrate Weber’s approach, let’s use the situation of workers in a job. Marx, Weber’s compatriot, had argued in his critique of capitalism, that the situation of workers and their employer was structurally determined. The workers’ situation was pre-ordained to be subservient and antagonistic to that of the employer. The antagonistic situation stems from the fact that the workers and their employers have incompatible interests, which causes the employer to force his workers to work more hours (surplus labor) for less wages, a situation Marx called exploitation. However, workers typically accept the exploitative employment situation and oppressive power structure, knowing that they must keep their job in order to be able to support themselves and their families. Marx predicted that if the employment situation becomes intolerable, the workers may form a trade union to bargain with the employer for better wages. He, however, reasoned that the logic of capitalism will lead to a betterment of the workers’ condition, as the interest of the employer is to continue to maximize his profits on the backs of his workers by exploiting them more. In the end, the workers would rise up and overthrow the capitalist system. But Weber disagreed with Marx’s logic. He took a more nuanced position on the workers’ putative action, saying workers’ sense of exploitation at the hands of their employer would not necessarily translate into action against the employer or rebellion against the capitalist system. This is because, he argued, workers’ motives are informed by the specific situation they find themselves in. For some workers in certain situations in certain times

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with certain motivations or incentives and opportunities, activism or rebellion may be course of action. As rational social actors weigh the potential benefits against the costs of their actions, evaluate multiple alternative courses of action and decide to act or not to act. Since each situation evinces different motives, different approaches or tactics, Weber advised the sociologist to deploy the methodological tool of verstehen to assess each situation through the perspectives of specific groups of social actors, in order to determine what meanings they take out of the given situation, how they evaluate alternative paths of action, and how they decide to embark on a certain course action (or not) (Gingrich 2013) No doubt, Weber can be credited with being one of the progenitors of interactionism, although his methodological approach has undergone drastic change and refinement over the years, inspiring a distinctive Weberian branch in contemporary symbolic interactionism. Wallace &Wolf (2011) have noted that Weber has left an indelible footprint in modern symbolic interactionism, particularly the symbolic interactionism of Herbert Blumer. Another notable forerunner of symbolic interactionism is another German sociologist. While he works have been subjected to scathing criticism for lack of focus, some contemporary sociologists have described his contributions to sociology, and especially to symbolic interactionism as significant. He opposed and rejected the organic theories of social development as proposed by most of the classical sociological theorists, notably, Comte, Durkheim, and Spencer. He not only debunked the functionalist notion that society is a living thing, but also opposed the idealist suggestion that society is an abstract creation of the intellect (Delaney, 2004, p. 115). To, Simmel society constitutes the totality or summation of human experience and its patterned interactions. (Ravelli, 2011) Simmel is credited with the promotion of what he referred to as the formal school of sociology (Littlewood, 2002). Simmel’s Methodological Relationism Best known for his pioneering work in Microsociology, Simmel (pronounced Zimmel) played a pivotal role in the development of small-group research. ((See Ritzer, 1992 p. 161 and Ashley and Orenstein, 1990, pp. 314-5). Ritzer (1992) describes Simmel's basic approach as "methodological relationism," because he operates on the principle that everything interacts in some way with everything else. Using fashion to make this point, Simmel observes in his essay that fashion is a form of social relationship. It fosters social conformity and non-conformity. Fashion, he argues, allows those who wish to conform to do so while also providing the norm from which individualistic people can deviate. In other words, fashion is a contested site, which fosters intense social relationships that can be both harmonious and conflictual. It also engen-

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ders multiple and often conflicting role enactments. “Within the fashion process, people take on a variety of social roles that play off the decisions and actions of others.” (Ritzer Theory 6 edition…) Extended to a more general level, Simmel’s theory of fashion illuminates people’s behavior in the cultural setting. People are influenced by both objective culture (the things that people produce) and individual culture (the capacity of individuals to produce, absorb, and control elements of objective culture). For him, social actors possess and often exercise creative capacities (more-life) that enable them to produce objective culture that transcends them. But objective culture (morethan-life) comes to stand in irreconcilable opposition to the creative forces that have produced it in the first place. (Ritzer 1992, as cited in Gingrich, 2015) He is best known for two works: “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903) and The Philosophy of Money (1907). Simmel's ideas have influenced scholars from a wide range of theoretical and ideological traditions, including the Marxist scholar Georg Lukacs (1885-1971) and his writings on the city and on money are regarded as the Holy Grail by contemporary urban sociologists. Simmel is a rare pedigree in interdisciplinary scholarship. He combines ideas from all of the three major classical writers and draws inspiration from Hegel and Kant. Thus, one can see similarities in his analyses of social structures, the city, money, and modern society with the writings of Durkheim (problem of individual and society), Weber (effects of rationalization), and Marx (alienation). From Simmel’s perspective, society is an association of free individuals. This focus on freewheeling individuals invested with agency and free will distinguishes sociology from other disciplines, particularly the natural or physical sciences. For him, sociology is more than the discovery of natural laws that govern human interaction. "For Simmel, society is made up of the interactions between and among individuals, and the sociologist should study the patterns and forms of these associations, rather than quest after social laws." (Farganis, p. 133, as cited in Gingrich, 2015). This emphasis on social interaction at the individual and small group level, and viewing the study of these interactions as the primary task of sociology makes Simmel's approach different from that of the classical writers, especially Marx and Durkheim.

Briefly Simmel highlights several other characteristics of the social actor: (a) Social actors must be consciously oriented to one another. (b) The individual actor has a sense of conscience. (c) The norms and values of society become internalized in individual consciousness. (d) People have the ability to confront themselves mentally, to set themselves apart from their own actions.

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Levels of Concerns Sociologists have identified four basic levels of concern in Simmel’s work. At the first level, he makes assumptions about the psychological workings of social life. At the second, focuses on the sociological workings of interpersonal relationships. At the third level, Simmel explores the structure of, and changes in, the social and cultural “spirit” of his times. At the fourth level, he probes into the nature and inevitable fate of humanity. Much of his work flows from the micro-sociological tradition, focused on forms and the interaction that takes place with different social groups. The forms include subordination, superordination, exchange, conflict, and sociability Of his many concerns, the human capacity for creativity and selfemancipation stands tall. While not ignoring the sometimes crippling effects of social structures on human actors, he sought to empower people, particularly urbanites (city dwellers) to emancipate themselves from bastions of modern bureaucratic structures and governance. He gives prominence of place in his discussions of the diverse forms of social interaction, the ability of actors to create social structures, and the disastrous effects those structures have on the creativity of individuals. In addition, Simmel highlights several other characteristics of the social actor, which we summarize as follows: First, social actors must be consciously oriented to one another. Second, the individual actor has a sense of conscience. Third, the norms and values of society become internalized in individual consciousness. Fourth, people have the ability to confront themselves mentally, to set themselves apart from their own actions. Simmel is best known in contemporary sociology for his contributions to our understanding of patterns or forms of social interaction. His primary interests include (1) association among conscious actors. His intent was to look at a wide range of interactions that may seem trivial at some times but crucially important at other times. (2) the form rather than the content of social interaction. For Simmel, “the sociologist's task is to impose a limited number of forms on social reality, extracting commonalities that are found in a wide array of specific interactions.” (Ritzer, 1992) He proceeds from here to construct what Ritzer describes as “geometry of social relations.” He distinguishes between different forms of social groups, including primary groups, secondary groups, small groups, large groups, dyads, and triads. (Farganis, p. 133) Dyads, Simmel contends, are the most fragile of all social groups as they quickly dissolve on the emergence of a conflict. An altercation between two friends or spouses is a good example. He proposes that the crucial difference between the dyad (two-person group) and triad (three-person group) is that a triad presents a greater threat to the

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individuality of group members. For example, the birth of a child in a new family has the potential of undermining the stability of the family. One of the parent’s sense of inclusion could be challenged as the attention and affection switches to the newborn. In some adult relationships, a third party in a triad may “knock the heads of the two together” in order to curry the favor one or other through back-stabbing and gossips. Simmel believes the social actor is less constrained and has a wider navigational leeway in the larger society than in small groups. He contends that the individual is likely to be involved in a number of groups, each of which controls only a small portion of his or her personality.

Briefly Dyad is a two-person group Triad is a three-person group

Primary Concerns, Interests, and Contributions According to Farganis (2013) Simmel “began his inquiries from the bottom up,” focusing first on the minutest of social interactions and then ferrets out how larger-scale institutions emerged from them. This approach enabled him to discover phenomena that both macro and micro theorists missed. He demonstrated how micro interactions lead to macro ones with several examples. In his theory of social interactions, Simmel identified different types of human groupings and the “laws” that guide interaction in each. For instance, he maintained that the number of parties to an interaction can affect the mode and intensity of interaction. The interaction between two people, a dyad, will be very different from that which is possible in a three-party relationship, or triad. (Farganis, p. 133, as cited in Gingrich, 2013) Group Size and Interaction Group size determines the dynamics and logic of the group. Here he placed a premium on the form of the group, rather than the content of the interaction. In the dyad, a relationship is often straightforward and direct. Each interlocutor is able to present himself or herself in such a manner that he or she does not lose his or identity. In other words, individuals in a dyad are able to maintain their identities in the relationship with no risk of losing those identities. In addition, either party can end the relationship by withdrawing from it at will. This makes dyads more fragile. Triads are more enduring and more complex than dyads. Triads lend themselves to multiple group dynamics and various strategies do emerge that tend to alter the form of interaction from dyads.

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In the triad, there may be strategies that lead to competition, alliances, or mediation (Gingrich, 2013). “The triad is likely to develop a group structure independent of the individuals in it, whereas this is less likely in the dyad.” (Ritzer, p. 166) As group size increases, even more, Ritzer maintains, "the increase in the size of the group or society increases individual freedom." (p. 167, as cited in Gingrich, 2013). The small circle of early or pre-modern times, firmly closed against the neighboring strange, or in some way antagonistic circles ... allows its individual members only a narrow field for the development of unique qualities and free, self-responsible movements. ... The selfpreservation of very young associations requires the establishment of strict boundaries and a centripetal unity.” (Farganis, p. 140, as cited in Gingrich, 2013) Gingrich (2013) notes that individual freedom and agency increases as the group grows in numbers and extends itself spatially, "the group's direct, inner unity loosens, and the rigidity of the original demarcation against others is softened through mutual relations and connections." (Farganis, p. 140, as cited in Gingrich, 2013). This implies much greater possibility of individual freedom and flexibility, with the common culture and form of association greatly weakened. (Gingrich, 2013) Allen, Andersson, and Appelcline (2015, p.1) note that “the first social experience of anyone's life is a dyadic relationship—that between a mother and her unborn child. This parent-child relationship continues once the child is born. Overall, dyads are the most common social group; they are seen everywhere, in personal, academic and business relationships.” Dyads as the first building blocks of social relationship and interaction have both positive and negative functions. They promote direct and empathic interaction, which could last a lifetime, but they are the most fragile of all social groups. An altercation between the two could easily lead to the dissolution of the group. For example, a fight between two friends could easily end the friendship. Triads are more stable than the dyads but are still fragile too. In a triad the third member may seek to cultivate the favor of the other two by literally knocking their heads together through gossips and back-biting. Objective Culture One of the main foci of Simmel's historical and philosophical sociology is the cultural level of social reality, which he called objective culture. In Simmel's view, people produce culture, but because of their ability to reify social reality, the cultural world and the social world come to take on lives of their own and increasingly dominate the actors who created them. Simmel identified a number of components of objective culture, including tools, transportation, technology, the arts, language, the intellectual sphere, conventional wisdom,

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religious dogma, philosophical systems, legal systems, moral codes, and ideals. The absolute size of objective culture increases with modernization. The number of different components of the cultural realm also grows. What worried Simmel most was the threat to individual culture posed by the growth of objective culture. Simmel asserts that modernity empowers as much as it enslaves the individual. He notes as the division of labor in modern societies increases, people’s ability to create a rich and varied cultural life. However, this comes at a cost, as the highly skilled and specialized individual becomes overwhelmed by and loses a sense of the general culture and loses the ability to control it. (Ritzer, 2012) The Philosophy of Money In The Philosophy of Money, Simmel deploys dialectics to assess the impact of the money economy on the inner world of social actors and the objective culture. He begins by asserting that money links individuals to a variety of social phenomena including exchange, ownership, greed, extravagance, cynicism, individual freedom, style of life, culture, and the value of personality. In his characteristic dialectical and ambivalent style, he posits that people create value by making objects, separating themselves from those objects, and then seeking to overcome distance, obstacles, and difficulties. He declares that money creates distance from objects and at the same time provides the means to overcome it. As Ritzer(2012) points out, Simmel saw money as providing the means by which the market, the economy, and ultimately society, acquire a life of their own that is external to and coercive of the actor. Finally, Simmel worried that the essence and significance of members of modern society would significantly decline as money becomes more important. “A society in which money becomes an end in itself can cause individuals to become increasingly cynical and to have a blasé attitude.” (Ritzer, 148) Chapter Summary Philosophical Sources and Intellectual Roots of Symbolic Interactionism •

•

The intellectual origins of symbolic interactions can be attributed to the works of William James, George Simmel, John Dewey, Max Weber, and George Herbert Mead. Mead is the founder of the theory, although he did not publish any academic work on the paradigm. The intellectual heirs of symbolic interactionism are Herbert Blumer, Mead’s former student, who was instrumental in publishing the lectures his former professor posthumously with the title Symbolic Interactionism.

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Other intellectual heirs are Erving Goffman and Robert Park. Pragmatism refers to the process of human adjustment to the world, in which humans constantly seek to master the conditions of their environment. Pragmatism proposes that humans can: o denote symbolically other people and aspects of the world around them; o develop attitudes and feelings toward these objects; o construct typical responses toward objects, so they can express themselves, develop self-feelings and attitudes, and construct responses toward themselves.

• •

•

John Dewey’s Pragmatism The main assumptions of Dewey’s writings are the following: • • •

• • • • •

All types of human activity are instruments that are developed to solve the multiple problems humans face, There is no eternal truth; instead, truth is based on experience, testable and verifiable by all who investigate it, The human mind was not just a thing or a structure, but an active process by which the individual imagines, interprets, decides, defines, and acts in the world. William James’ Typology of Selves Three central premises underpin his work: Consciousness is active, selective, and interested, Direct experience is an especially important aspect of this, Ideas are not absolutes, but are a way of preparing for and anticipating experiences.

According to James self has multiple components, which he called typologies of selves: • • •

The material self which entails the physical objects that humans view as part of their being and as crucial to their identity. The social self is the self-feelings that individuals derive from associations with other people. The spiritual self denotes the general cognitive style and capacities typifying an individual.

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Behaviorism Behaviorism derives from the primes that reinforcement guides and directs human action. The basic assumptions are: • • • • • • • • •

human learning comes about as a result of conditioning, human behavior and learning involve a stimulus in the natural environment, this stimulus functions to elicit a particular response, the response or behavior, then, can be scientifically controlled by identifying the specific stimulus and manipulating it. Cognitive theory focuses on mental activities of normal human beings in shaping their conduct. Its main assumptions are individual members of society are active receivers of sensory input. Their behavioral responses to such external stimuli [i.e. sensory inputs] are shaped by inner mental [cognitive] processes. Cognitive processes enable people to transform input in various ways; code it, store it, interpret it selectively, distort it, and retrieve it for later use.

Darwinism Darwinism denotes a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. It is a set out as a series of causal elements that, working together, will produce the needed transformations. Intellectual Roots of SI •

•

Symbolic interactionism traces is intellectual roots as far back as mid-twentieth century writings of Max Weber and the American philosopher, George Herbert Mead. Weber’s contribution to the interactionism was his ability to bridge the micro and macro perspectives and emphasis on verstehen (the German word for empathic understanding), or subjective meaning of human behavior

Max Weber: The Foremost Forerunners of Interactionism Max Weber was a forerunner of interactionism thanks to his pioneering role in defining the social world as that of social action and for calling on sociologists to develop an understanding of how individuals act.

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The central arguments advanced by Weber include: • • • •

Each social action carries a meaning for the social actor. The social actor acts purposefully. He coined the term verstehen (empathy or introspective understanding) as a tool for the sociologist to carry out this task. He defined sociology “as the interpretive understanding of social action

Georg Simmel •

•

•

He opposed and rejected the organic theories of social development as proposed by most of the classical sociological theorists, notably, Comte, Durkheim, and Spencer. He debunked the functionalist notion that society is a living thing and opposed the idealist suggestion that society is an abstract creation of the intellect He proposed that society constitutes the totality or summation of human experience and its patterned interactions. He is credited with the promotion of the formal school of sociology

Simmel’s Methodological Relationism • •

•

•

•

He played a pivotal role in the development of small-group research. His approach is described as "methodological relationism," because he operates on the principle that everything interacts in some way with everything else. Using fashion to make this point, Simmel observes fashion is a form of social relationship, fostering social conformity and nonconformity. Fashion is a contested site, which fosters intense social relationships that can be both harmonious and conflictual. It also engenders multiple and often conflicting role enactments. People are influenced by both objective culture (the things that people produce) and individual culture (the capacity of individuals to produce, absorb, and control elements of objective culture). Social actors possess and often exercise creative capacities (more-life) that enable them to produce objective culture that transcends them.

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Other characteristics of the social actor: (1) Social actors must be consciously oriented to one another. (2) The individual actor has a sense of conscience. (3) The norms and values of society become internalized in individual consciousness. (4) People have the ability to confront themselves mentally, to set themselves apart from their own actions. • •

• •

He constructed what Ritzer describes as “geometry of social relations.” He distinguishes between different forms of social groups: primary groups, secondary groups, small groups, large groups, dyads, and triads Dyads (two persons) are the most fragile of all social groups as they quickly dissolve on the emergence of a conflict. The crucial difference between the dyad (two-person group) and triad (three-person group) is that a triad presents a greater threat to the individuality of group members.

The Philosophy of Money • •

•

• • •

Simmel deploys dialectics to assess the impact of the money economy on the inner world of social actors and the objective culture. Money links individuals to a variety of social phenomena including exchange, ownership, greed, extravagance, cynicism, individual freedom, style of life, culture, and the value of personality. People create value by making objects, separating themselves from those objects, and then seeking to overcome distance, obstacles, and difficulties. Money creates distance from objects and at the same time provides the means to overcome it The essence and significance of members of modern society would significantly decline as money becomes more important. “ “A society in which money becomes an end in itself can cause individuals to become increasingly cynical and to have a blasé attitude.”

Chapter Four: George Herbert Mead “The Father” of Symbolic Interactionism

Box 4:1 - George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) George Herbert Mead was born in South Hadley, Massachusetts on February 27, 1863. In 1894, Mead moved from The University of Michigan to Chicago, Illinois, where he would later become the center of the sociological department at The University of Chicago. After Mead’s death in 1931 his students at the University published his Mind, Self, and Society teachings. Herbert Blumer, Mead’s pupil, further developed his theory and coined it “Symbolic Interactionism.” He was the second child of Hiram Mead (d. 1881), a Congregationalist minister and pastor of the South Hadley Congregational Church, and Elizabeth Storrs Billings (1832-1917). George Herbert's older sister, Alice, was born in 1859. In 1870, the family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, where Hiram Mead became professor of homiletics at the Oberlin Theological Seminary, a position he held until his death in 1881. After her husband's death, Elizabeth Storrs Billings Mead taught for two years at Oberlin College and subsequently, from 1890 to 1900, served as president of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

As mentioned earlier, Mead did not bequeath symbolic interactionism with any published work, yet he is credited with being the pioneer proponent of the paradigm. His enduring legacy is his synthesis of behaviorist, pragmatist, and Darwinian principles blended into an image of humans as attempting to adjust to the world around them and as retaining those characteristics, particularly mind and self that, enable them to adapt to their surroundings (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). Mead proposed that mind, self, and other unique features of humans evolve from efforts to survive in the social environment. The mind, self, etc., are capacities that arise from the processes of coping, adjusting, adapting, and achieving the ultimate gratification or reinforcement: survival (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). In short, Mead visualized humans as social chameleons who change and adapt their actions the contexts they find themselves in.

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Mead was influenced by several key theoretical and philosophical traditions, such as utilitarianism, evolutionism, pragmatism, behaviorism, and Cooley’s conception of the looking-glass self (Turner et al., 2002, p. 435). Utilitarianism was a popular discourse of analysis during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The utilitarian ideas were promoted by individuals such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. They assumed that human action was influenced by self-interest. Human nature dictated that human seek to maximize their ‘utility’ or benefit in a free and openly competitive marketplace. Mead adopted three elements of these ideas in developing his theories of social action: 1) actors seek rewards; 2) actors attempt to modify their actions and thoughts to competitive contexts and situations; and 3) actors are goal oriented and their behavior is influenced by instrumental approaches to social action (Turner et al., 2002, p. 436). Utilitarianism also assumes that human action is rational. That is, in deciding their actions or judgments, they base them on the relevant information that has been gathered; consider the consequences of various types of conduct; and choose the action that will yield the most utility and benefit (Turner et al., 2002, p. 437). Mead’s conception of the human mind was influenced by these arguments. He viewed the human mind as a reflective process of thought through which alternatives are weighed and considered. Mead’s ideas were also affected by the ideas of Charles Darwin. Mead asserted that at birth an infant is asocial and not yet human. It is through adapting to a social environment that an infant is able to develop behavioral capacities that are unique to humans (Turner et al., 2002, p. 437). He asserted that an infant’s humanness is developed through a process of selection. In order for an infant to survive, he/she must adapt to his/her environment, which is composed of people who use language and possess mind and conceptions of self. Mead as a Behaviorist Behaviorism derives from the premise that reinforcement guides and directs human action. Meadian behaviorism is distinct from, and refutation of the mechanical stimulus/ response type developed by John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner. The mistake Watson, Skinner and fellow radical behaviorists made was to equate animal behavior with human behavior. He developed the field of social behaviorism as a way to debunk the ideas of radical behaviorists, such as John B. Watson. Radical behaviorists focused on observable behaviors (Ritzer, 2000, p. 339). Mead wanted to analyze those covert aspects of behavior that are not observable. Mead wanted to study these covert behaviors by ap-

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plying the principles of empiricism and science to them. That is, Mead pointed out that humans have the capacity to think and use language in their interactions in order to decide how to respond to a stimulus (Ritzer, 2000, p. 340). Mead maintained that both covert and overt behaviors must be understood and analyzed through the capacities and abilities of individuals to adjust to society (Turner et al., 2002, p. 439). Mead argued that unlike animal behavior, human behavior goes beyond the simplistic stimulus-response mechanism. In human behavior, the mind acts as transition belt, intervening, as it were, between the stimulus and the response, making such behavior very complex form of action. To make the distinction between human behavior from animal behavior clear, Mead distinguished between the act and the gesture. He referred the act to interactions with objects and gesture to interactions with other people (or animals). It is gestures that serve as stimuli to others, not act, Mead maintained. According to Ritzer (2000, p.87), “the act is the fundamental union in Mead's theory.” The act involves four stages, namely impulse, perception, manipulation, and consummation. The basic mechanism of the social act, according to Mead, is the gesture. Mead pays particular attention to one kind of gesture, significant symbols, which make it possible for humans to think, to communicate, and to be stimulators of their own actions. While both humans and animals employ gestures, Mead argued, it is only humans who use significant gestures. Significant gestures are gestures that involve thought before a response, in the same way as looking before leaping. Thus, from Mead’s standpoint, the most important kind of gestures are significant symbols. Significant symbols are symbols that have shared meanings for those involved in social intercourse. In other words, a significant symbol is the kind of significant gesture that elicits the same kind of response in others that it is trying to elicit. Language, a vocal gesture, is the most complex and important type of significant symbol for human beings, Mead asserted (Ritzer, 2000). Mead as a Pragmatist Meadian pragmatism was by the well-known American educationist John Dewey. Pragmatists believe that organisms are practical creatures that come to terms with the actual conditions of the world. Human beings seek to cope with their actual conditions, and they learn those behavioral patterns that provide gratification. Pragmatism was concerned with how the process of thinking inclined individuals to act in certain ways and how actions of individuals had consequences for the thought processes of individuals (Turner et al., 2002, p. 438). They viewed social interaction though as a process that enabled humans to adapt to their social environments and to achieve their goals.

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Pragmatism, then, is concerned with symbols, language, rational thinking, and how the world is affected by the mental capacities of humans (Turner et al., 2002, p. 438). The most important type of gratification is adjustment to social contexts. According to Ritzer (2000, p. 89), Mead adopted from the pragmatists three important themes: (1) a focus on the interaction between actors and the social world, (2) a view of both actors and the social world as dynamic processes, and (3) the centrality of actors' ability to interpret the social world. In sum, both pragmatism and symbolic interactionism view thinking as a process. Mead recognized the importance of overt, observable behavior, but expanded the understanding of mental capacities of most psychological behaviorists by stressing the importance of covert behavior. Unlike the radical behaviorists such as Watson and Skinner, Mead believed that there were significant differences between human beings and animals, particularly the human capacity to use language and dynamically create social reality. Mead adopted the emphasis of pragmatism on language and symbols in thought and self-control (Turner et al., 2002, p. 438). Thought, in its lay or scientific forms, is considered as an instrument that is drawn upon to achieve goals (Turner et al., 2002, p. 439). Pragmatists argued that as human we are constantly adjusting and adapting to our environment (social or physical) and thought is the main means of adapting to our environments. Pragmatists also highlighted the fact that we use our experiences as a way to check our thoughts and conceptions. That is, social actors are reflective. In fact, sociologists maintain that social experience enables individuals to learn, to think, and to develop behavioral patterns that are also meaningful to others. These ideas were central to the development of Mead’s conception of self. He agreed that the adaptation of individuals to their environments was influenced by a constant process of verifying thought and action based on experiment (Turner et al., 2002, p. 439). Another pragmatist who also influenced Mead’s ideas was William James. James argued that thought enables the individual to deal with the external world, and it is selective as it emphasizes some objects and excludes others (Turner et al., 2002, p. 444). Mead, as a result, conceived of mind as a process that selectively denotes objects and responds to them (Turner et al., 2002, p. 444). Self and mind are dialectically related to one another (Ritzer, 2000, p. 351). The body becomes self only after a mind has been developed. The self and its ability for reflexivity are also central to the development of mind. However, the self is not simply a mental process but also a social one (Ritzer, 2000, p. 351). Mead also argued that we can have and develop different self-feelings and act differently depending on the contexts of our social interactions. That is,

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our self-concepts are influenced by how we see ourselves in various social contexts and interactions (Turner et al., 2002, p. 445). For example, a person may be viewed as a cooperative individual in the religious organization he/she belongs to, or as a mediocre student at school. So, he/she may construct his/her self-feelings as a cooperative individual in one context and as a “bad” student in another. This is due to the reflexive aspect of the self. Reflexivity implies the capacity to place ourselves unconsciously into others’ positions and to behave view the world, and act as they normally do (Ritzer, 2000, p. 351). It is the ability of the self to think about itself. The self enables individuals to become involved in conversations with other people since one is aware of what one is saying and as such one is able to screen what is being said and to control what is going to be said next (Ritzer, 2000, p. 352). In general, pragmatism influenced Mead in several ways. First, pragmatism assumed that what we consider as reality is not an objective phenomenon actually existing in the real world, and external to us out there. Reality is the outcome of human relations and the end result of humans acting in the world (Ritzer, 2000, p. 338). Second, people act upon the world (in the world) based on their experiences that reflect and incorporate what has worked in the past. They would alter their actions based on what they think no longer works (Ritzer, 2000, p. 338). As Powers (2004, p. 110) explained, “Pragmatism stresses doing what works rather than sticking to failed models of the past”. For example, Dewey stressed that lecturing as a method of teaching has failed students. He introduced new methods of teaching, such as field trips and the importance of hands-on experience (experiential learning), which came lay the foundation of his child-centered pedagogy (Powers, 2004, p. 110). Third, humans define the objects that they encounter in the world based on their use for them. Fourth, the best way to understand who and what individuals are is to observe how they act in the world and in their social relationships with others (Ritzer, 2000, p. 338).

Briefly Socialization is the process through which individuals learn the norms and values of society. Socialization involves learning social norms from a variety of people, places, and institutions, called agents of socialization.

Mead as a Darwinist Mead gleaned and distilled several basic assumptions from Darwinism to form his symbolic interactionist theory. He proposed that (1) humans are

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organisms seeking a niche in which they can adapt. (2) humans discover a niche in the social world. (3) an element that facilitates survival or adaptation of the organism will be retained. Mead maintained that this is an evolving and historical process. He suggested that human nature is not a useful way for understanding human action because human beings are social animals who rely on society for survival to form their core qualities and their individual qualities. Human nature is those nearly permanent human qualities that are biologically-based, such as sex, skin color and hair texture (Tepperman, 1993). We cannot judge a person’s behavior based on these qualities. The problem with relying on human nature to judge why people behave the way they do is that it is impossible to say exactly what human nature is. Relying on human nature to judge human behavior closes off discussion and investigation, because if we say it is human nature, for example, to be selfish, then we can say there is nothing we can do when people pursue their selfish interests at the expense of others. This argument can be used to justify greed and social inequality. But, unlike human nature, a socially-learned behavior is plastic, flexible, and unpredictable. The plasticity, flexibility, and unpredictability of human behavior is acquired through socialization. Human beings are socialized through role-taking significant others and developing a generalized other self. Socialization is the process through which individuals learn the norms and values of society. Socialization involves learning social norms from a variety of people, places, and institutions, called agents of socialization. Agents of socialization include parents, siblings, the family, friends, the educational system, and the media. They go through both primary and secondary socialization. Primary socialization primarily takes place in the family, while secondary socialization takes place in the wider society. Symbolic interactionists divide agents of socialization into primary and secondary. Agents of primary socialization are parents, siblings (a child has any) and other close relatives, such as aunties, uncles, and grandparents. These are people the child is emotionally attached to during his or her early, formative years. Agents of secondary socialization include school, the media, church, friendship circles, etc. Socialization is continuous beginning from the cradle to the grave, from infancy to adulthood. Socialization creates our core qualities of symbols, self and, mind. In his two major works Mind, Self and Society (1934) and The Philosophy of the Act (1938), Mead emphasized the subjective meaning of human behavior, social process, and pragmatism. He stressed held that the subjective aspects of social life, rather than on objective, macro-structural aspects of social systems. He reasoned that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that those things have for them and these meanings are a product of social interaction in society. Furthermore, he contended, these meanings

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are modified through a process of interpretation, which each individual uses when dealing with the things that he or encounters. To Mead, society consists of organized and patterned interactions among individuals (Mann, 2011, p.187). Mead as a Social Behaviorist In his work, Mind, Self, and Society (1934) Mead starts with an intensive overview of the term social behaviorism. He arrives at a definition and comprehensive understanding of the concept by investigating social psychology, Watsonian behaviorism, and the philosophy of William James. Traditionally, social psychology focuses on human experience from the point of view of the individual, but Mead chooses a social-psychological path. “The point of approach which I wish to suggest is that of dealing with experience from the standpoint of society, at least from the standpoint of communication as essential to the social order” (Mead 1992, p.1). This type of social psychological perspective focuses on taking an approach, which puts the individual at the center of their own experience and yet takes into account the social nature of that individual as well. Mead maintains that this perspective (now termed sociological social psychological orientation) makes sense as “social psychology is especially interested in the effect which the social group has in the determination of the experience and conduct of the individual member” (Mead 1992, p.1). Conceptually, Mead’s social psychological perspective places a premium on how an individual’s self develops, and how self-consciousness develops from person’s experiences. It is from this focus upon the development of the individual self and self-consciousness that he finds a definition of social psychology. Mead makes this point when he states that: “... in the study of the experience and behavior of the individual organism or self in its dependence upon the social group to which it belongs, we find a definition of the field of social psychology” (Mead 1992, p.1). Not only does Mead create a definition, but he also explains the major pursuit of social psychological study: He asserts: “While minds and selves are essentially social products, products or phenomena of the social side of human experience, the physiological mechanism underlying experience is far from irrelevant—indeed is indispensable—to their genesis and existence; for individual experience and behavior is, of course, physiologically basic to social experience and behavior: (Mead 1992, pp.1–2). This quotation represents the main pursuit of study for those in the social psychology discipline. Notice that the key core concept of social psychology for Mead focuses on the notion that human experience and our own physio-

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logical functions are based in the social world. This concept of human experience and bodily functioning, as located within the social structure, remained a major focus for Mead throughout the book, Mind, Self, and Society (1934). The second perspective that Mead presents is pure behaviorism. His discussion of behaviorism is centered on the work of John B. Watson. The behaviorism that Watson discussed can be defined as “an approach to the study of the experience of the individual from the point of view of his conduct, particularly, but not exclusively, the conduct as it is observable by others” (Mead 1967, p.2). Watson’s behaviorism became a psychological theory, however, it started as a theory focused on animals and animal psychology in the beginning. During behaviorism’s days in animal psychology, “it was found to be impossible to use what is termed introspection. One cannot appeal to the animal’s introspection but must study the animal in terms of external conduct. Earlier, animal psychology added an inferential reference to consciousness, and even undertook to find the point of conduct at which consciousness appears” (Mead 1992, p.2). The inference suggested by introspection was, at the time, very clever. However, it lacked the ability to be empirically studied because it could not be proven using experimentation. This distanced the idea from scientific use and it also proved to be unnecessary in the study of “individual animals” (Mead 1992, p.2). Watson’s process of introspection also fell short when considering “experiences, which are private and belong to the individual himself and experiences commonly called subjective” (Mead 1992, p.2). The Watsonian explanation of these experiences followed the logic “of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland “Off with their heads!” there were no such things” (Mead 1992, pp.2–3). This particular perspective on introspection conforms to the idea that people lack consciousness. Watson’s portrayal of the introspective process is “explained by the use of language symbols. These symbols were not necessarily uttered loudly enough to be heard by others, and often only involved the muscles of the throat without leading to audible speech.” (Mead 1992, p.3) Watson’s explanation of the introspective process is reductionist, that is, all of human thought can be described in relation to language alone. “In this way, Watson explained the whole field of inner experience in terms of external behavior. Instead of calling such behavior subjective it was regarded as the field of behavior that was accessible only to the individual himself… That, in brief, is the point of view of Watson’s behavioristic psychology. It aims to observe conduct as it takes place, and to utilize that conduct to explain the experience of the individual without bringing in the observation of an inner experience, a consciousness as such” (Mead 1992, 3).

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The third perspective that Mead presents in Mind, Self, and Society (1934) is that of the American pragmatist William James. Mead began his discussion of James by investigating his 1904 article titled: Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist? In this article, James gives the reader an interesting example of a person in a roomsurrounded by objects from which two potential standpoints are available. First, there is the standpoint of the “furniture, which, may be considered from the standpoint of the person who bought it and used it” (Mead 1992, p.4). The second standpoint is “from the point of view of its (furniture) color values which attach to it in the minds of the persons who observe them, its aesthetic value, its economic value, its traditional value” (Mead 1992, p.4). These two distinct standpoints can be considered in terms of psychology, that is, they can be viewed in relation to the experiences of the individual. In the case of James’ furniture example, “one man puts one value upon it and another gives it another value. But the same objects can be regarded as physical parts of a physical room” (Mead 1992, p.4). With this statement, James is “insisting that the two cases differ only in the arrangement of certain contents in different series” (Mead 1992, p.4). Mead describes this idea: “The furniture, the walls, the house itself, belong to one historical series. We speak of the house as having been built, of the furniture as having been made. We put the house and furniture into another series when one comes in and assesses these objects from the point of view of his own experience.” Mead is talking about the same chair, but the chair is for him now a matter of certain contours, certain colors, taken from his own experience. It involves the experience of the individual (Mead 1992, p.4). This example, though every day in nature, does present a major point in terms of human consciousness. James’ example is a statement about human consciousness. That is, the room is not just a historical series but is also represents the experience of each individual. The philosophical perspective presented by James in his 1904 article illustrates a “growing recognition of the importance of James’s insistence that a great deal has been placed in consciousness that must be returned to the so-called objective world” (Mead 1992, p.4). The end of Mead’s discussion concludes with a brief assessment of the limitations of behaviorism and individual psychology. For Mead, “psychology itself cannot very well be made a study of the field of consciousness alone; it is necessarily a study of a more extensive field” (Mead 1992, p.4). However, psychology is a science that “makes use of introspection, in the sense that it looks within the experience of the individual for phenomena not dealt with in any other sciences-phenomena to which only the individual himself has experiential access. That which belongs (experientially) to the individual qua individual, and is accessible to him alone, is certainly included within the field of psy-

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chology, whatever else is or is not included” (Mead 1992, 5). The point above represents Mead’s attempt to separate the field of psychology from the basic tenets of social psychology. Next, Mead focuses his discussion on individual’s internal or ‘inner experiences’ from a behaviorist perspective. “What one must insist upon is that objectively observable behavior finds expression within the individual, not in the sense of being in another world, a subjective world, but in the sense of being within his organism.” (Mead 1992: 5). He concludes by noting: “The external act which we do observe is a part of the process which has started within; the values which we say the instrument has are values through the relationship of the object to the person who has that sort of attitude.” (1992: 5).


 Briefly Social psychology can be defined as “studying the activity or behavior of the individual as it lies within the social process; the behavior of an individual can be understood only in terms of the behavior of the whole social group of which he is a member, since his individual acts are involved in larger, social acts which go beyond himself and which implicate the other members of that group.”-Mead

 In these two types of behaviorism it could be said that there are versions which recognize that objects (things) have characteristics and that there are experiences that individuals can have that are considered as happening in an act. According to Mead, the problem with behaviorism, as practiced by Watson, is that it neglects “the part of the act that lies within the organism that only comes to expression later…there is a field within the act itself which is not external, but which belongs to the act, and there are characteristics of that inner organic conduct which do reveal themselves in our own attitudes, especially those connected with speech” (Mead 1992, p.6). “Now, if our behavioristic point of view takes these attitudes into account we find that it can very well cover the field of psychology,” however it will not cover the field of social psychology or social behaviorism (Mead 1992:.6). A key component is still missing: the component of language. Unlike behaviorism, “we (social behaviorists) want to approach language not from the standpoint of inner meanings to be expressed, but in its larger context of cooperation in the group taking place by means of signals and gestures. Meaning appears within that process.” (Mead 1992:.6) This change in behavioristic

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perspective allows behaviorism to move from a psychological focus to a social behavioristic one. The combination of the elements of behaviorism and James’ philosophy of consciousness allows for the formation of social psychology. Social psychology can be defined as “studying the activity or behavior of the individual as it lies within the social process; the behavior of an individual can be understood only in terms of the behavior of the whole social group of which he is a member, since his individual acts are involved in larger, social acts which go beyond himself and which implicate the other members of that group.” (Mead 1992:.6–7) In sum, social behaviorism (the main perspective of Mind, Self, and Society (1934)) “is behavioristic, but unlike Watsonian behaviorism it recognizes the parts of the act which do not come to external observation, and it emphasizes the act of the human individual in its natural social situation” (Mead 1992, p.8). This quote illustrates that Mead has a more solidified perspective than previous attempts of defining and creating the major tenets of social psychology and social behaviorism. In the next section of this chapter, the basic tenets and ideas that further the explanation, definition, and discussion of Mead’s social behaviorism and conceptualization of Symbolic Interactionism are discussed. Fig. 4:1 - Summary of Mead’s Social Behaviourism

Mead on Language For Mead, “language is a part of social behavior” (Mead 1992, 13). Not only is language based upon speaking, but Mead asserted that it contains “an indefinite number of signs or symbols which may serve the purpose of what we term ‘language’” (Mead 1992, 13–14). Through the use of language, humans are deriving and interpreting meaning from other people even though they may not be consciously aware of it. However, this does not mean that there

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are not clues of this activity taking place. According to Mead, “[T]here is something that reveals to us what the purpose is—just the glance of an eye, the attitude of the body, which leads to the response.” (Mead 1992, p.14)

Through the use of language, humans are deriving and interpreting meaning from other people even though they may not be consciously aware of it.

Mead takes this basic assumption and expounds on it by stating that “Conversation in gestures may be carried on which cannot be translated into articulate speech.” (Mead 1992, p.14) An example of this would be two angry dogs approaching one another. Both dogs may bark, growl, and position themselves to bite or engage in conflict with the intent to harm each another. Even though neither dog spoke, both were able to understand the behavior and actions taking place. These types of situations, according to Mead, illustrate “a process out of which language might arise, that is, a certain attitude of one individual that calls out a response in the other, which in turn calls out a different approach and a different response, and so indefinitely” (Mead 1992, 14). In the section of Mind, Self, and Society (1934) titled “Mind,” Mead expands his concept of gestures by investigating the psychology of Wilhelm Wundt. Mead explains that “Wundt isolated a very valuable conception of the gesture as that which becomes later a symbol, but which is to be found in its earlier stages as a part of a social act…It is that part of the social act which serves as a stimulus to other forms involved in the same social act” (Mead 1992, p.42). Once again, we are brought back to the example of two angry dogs. The howling, growling, positioning, and readiness to attack from both dogs can be viewed as a sort of conversation between both animals. Though neither animal speaks its intent, one dog can anticipate the move of the other dog by responding to the last movement or the way in which each dog acts turns into a stimulus for the other dog to respond. “There is then a relationship between these two; and as the act is responded to by the other dog, it, in turn, undergoes change. The very fact that the dog is ready to attack another becomes a stimulus to the other dog to change his own position or his own attitude” (Mead 1992, 43). While one dog is doing this, the other dog is responding in the same manner by adjusting his relative position or getting ready to change his attitude as well. This set of acts and responses is an example of what Mead calls “a conversation of gestures” (Mead 1992, 43). Though in the example of the two angry dogs the conversation is not significant, one dog does not deliberately think ‘if he comes at me from this angle, I will adjust and gain superior position but doing this.’ In-

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stead, “what does take place is an actual change in his own position due to the direction of the approach of the other dog” (Mead 1992, 43). Another example of Mead’s conversation of gestures is illustrated “in boxing and fencing, as in the feint and the parry that is initiated on the part of the other. And then the first one of the two in turn changes his attack; there may be considerable play back and forth before actually a stroke results” (Mead 1992, 43). This example is similar to the angry dogs because “if the individual is successful, a great deal of his attack and defense must not be considered, it must take place immediately. He must adjust himself “instinctively” to the attitude of the other individual. He may, of course, think it out” (Mead 1992, p. 43). The majority of the response must happen instantaneously and with little to no thought. “In either case, we have a situation in which certain parts of the act become a stimulus to the other form to adjust itself to those responses; and that adjustment becomes a stimulus to the first form to change his act and start on a different one. There are a series of attitudes, movements, on the part of these forms which belong to the beginnings of acts that are the stimuli responses that take place” (Mead 1992, 43). According to Mead, “the term ‘gesture’ may be identified with these beginnings of social acts which are stimuli for the response of other forms” (Mead 1992, 43). This is the case with both the angry dog example and the boxing/parrying example. In either case, both angry dogs and fighters are changing their responses to one another, which in turn, forces the other dog or fighter to respond accordingly. “This interplay going on with the gestures serving their functions, calling out the responses of the others, these responses becoming themselves stimuli for readjustment, until the final social act itself can be carried out” is a process that is constantly in motion (Mead 1992, 44). Mead gives us another example in the response of a parent to a crying infant. When an infant cries it stimulates a response from the parent to react to the crying at hand. The parents’ reaction is to respond and then the infant responds to the parents’ attempt to acknowledge and assist with the reason the infant is crying. In this example, “we have a set of adjustments of the two forms carrying out a common social act involved in the care of the child…Thus we have, in all these instances, a social process in which one can isolate the gesture which has its function in the social process, and which can become an expression of emotions, or later can become the expression of meaning, an idea” (Mead 1992, 44–45). This social process involving gestures changes when the individual responds with an idea in mind. For instance, “a man may strike another before he means it; a man may jump and run away from a loud sound behind his back before he knows what he is doing. If he has the idea in his mind, then the gesture not only means this to the observer but it also means the idea which

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the individual has” (Mead 1992, 45). Mead provides an example of this when he discusses someone shaking their fist in your face. In this example, the shaking of a fist in your face by someone else connotes the not only does that person have a hostile or angry attitude but that they have some sort of idea behind why they feel this way. “When, now, that gesture means this idea behind it and it arouses that idea in the other individual, then we have a significant symbol” (Mead 1992, 45). In the example of the angry dogs, both dogs were gesturing to each other, which called out a response from both animals as they decided how to act and react. In the case of the shaking the fist example, the shaking fist is a symbol which elicits meaning. That is, we have a symbol that both individuals understand based on their previous experience. “When the gesture reaches that situation it has become what we call ‘language.’ It is now a significant symbol and it signifies a certain meaning” (Mead 1992, 46). “The vocal gesture becomes a significant symbol (unimportant, as such, on the merely affective side of experience) when it has the same effect on the individual making it that it has on the individual to whom it is addressed or who explicitly responds to it, and thus involves a reference to the self of the individual making it” (Mead 1992, 46). However, both the vocal and non-vocal gesture “in general, indicate some object or other within the field of social behavior, an object of common interest to all the individuals involved in the given social act this directed toward or upon that object” (Mead 1992, 46). The purpose of the gesture is to allow individuals the possibility of adjusting and readjusting to any social act and social situation they find themselves within. “The significant gesture and significant symbol affords far greater facilities for adjustment and readjustment than does the non-significant gesture” (Mead 1992, 46). This is true because according to Mead, adjustment and readjustment within the individual “calls out in the individual making it the same attitude toward it (or toward its meaning) that it calls out in the other individuals participating with him in the given social act, and thus makes him conscious of their attitude toward it (as a component of his behavior) and enables him to adjust his subsequent behavior to theirs in light of that attitude” (Mead 1992, 46). In sum, Mead explains that “the conscious or significant conversation of gestures is a more adequate and effective mechanism of mutual adjustment within the social act—involving, as it does, the taking, by each individual carrying it on, the attitude of the others toward himself—than is the consciousness or non-significant conversation of gestures” (1992: 46).

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The Social Component of Gestures According to Mead, “When in any given social act or situation, one individual indicates by a gesture to another individual what this other individual is to do, the first individual is conscious of the meaning of his own gesture—or the meaning of his gesture appears in his own experience” (Mead 1992, 47). Human meaning appears within our own experience and gestures as long as an individual is able to take the attitude of the person making the gesture, and is able to respond to it internally the same way the other person responds externally. Meaning derived from these gestures “become significant symbols when they implicitly arose in an individual making them the same responses which they explicitly arise, or are supposed to arouse, in other individuals, the individuals to whom they are addressed; whether external (between different individuals) or internal (between a given individual and himself )” (Mead 1992, 47). In this sense, the consciousness of an individual, and the process of ebb and flow involved in deriving meaning is dependent on our ability to take the attitude of others toward their own gestures. In addition, it also means that “every gesture comes within a given social group or community to stand for a particular act or response, namely, the act or response which calls it forth explicitly in the individual to whom it is addressed, and implicitly in the individual who makes it; and this particular act or response for which it stands as its meaning as a significant symbol” (Mead 1992, 47). This is an important point in Mead’s philosophy of social behaviorism because “only in terms of gestures as significant symbols is the existence of mind or intelligence possible; for only in terms of gestures which are significant symbols can thinking which is simply an internalized or implicit conversation of the individual with himself, by means of such gestures take place” (Mead 1992: 47). “The internalization in our experience of the external conversations of gestures which we carry on with other individuals in the social process is the essence of thinking” (Mead 1992, 47). That is, the internalization of gestures leads to the creation of significant symbols because they have shared meaning for all of societal members. If humans did not have the ability to arouse certain attitudes or responses from other individuals, then they could not “internalize significant symbols; we could not be conscious of them or their meanings” (Mead 1992, 47). This ever-present human process “is responsible for the genesis of and existence of mind or consciousness—namely, the taking of the attitude of the other toward one’s self, or towards one’s own behavior— also necessarily involves the genesis of existence at the same time of significant symbols, or significant gestures” (Mead 1992: 48).

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Mead’s Gesture Versus Wundt’s Gesture Mead’s socially orientated perspective on gestures differs greatly from the early twentieth century psychologist Wundt. “In Wundt’s doctrine, the parallelism between the gesture and emotion or the intellectual attitude of the individual, makes it possible to set up a like parallelism in the other individual” (Mead 1992: 48). However, Wundt’s “gesture calls out a gesture in the other form which will arouse or call out the same emotional attitude and the same idea” (Mead 1992: 48). This version of the process of gestures leads to a conversation that focuses on talking alone. Wundt’s conversation of gestures as previously described as not involving significant symbols or gestures. In this sense, from the angry dog example, Wundt’s “dogs are not talking to each other; there are no ideas in the minds of the dogs; nor do we assume that the dog is trying to convey an idea to the other dog” (Mead 1992: 48). A similar situation can be found with humans in terms of Wundt’s concept of gestures. “If the gesture, in the case of the human individual, has parallel with it a certain psychical state which is the idea of what the person is going to do, and if this gesture calls out a like gesture in the other individual it calls out a similar idea, then it becomes a significant gesture” (Mead 1992: 48). This significant gesture “stands for the ideas in the minds of both of them” (Mead 1992: 48). For Mead, Wundt’s perspective on gestures and parallelism is problematic: When a person shakes his fist in your face, that is a gesture in the sense in which we use the term, the beginning of the act that calls out a response on your part. Your response may vary; it may depend on the size of man, it may mean shaking your fist, or it may mean flight (1992: 48). In Mead’s example, no matter what response a person decides to act upon, there is the possibility of different responses. This is not true in the case of Wundt’s theory of gestures because “if we assume that there is a certain psychical state answering to a psychical state how are we going to get to the point where the gesture will arouse the same gesture in the attitude of the other individual?” (Mead 1992, 49). For Mead, Wundt’s concept of the gesture focuses not just on individual’s and what they may be thinking about but it also involves the concept of emotion whereas Mead’s concept of the gesture centers on the idea that “from the very beginning the other person’s gesture means “what you are going to do about it” (Mead 1992: 49). This means that Mead’s process of the gesture involves the responses to the acts of each individual as long as there is a stimulus to react to in the environment. By comparison, Mead’s version of gestures differs from Wundt’s psychical state in that it emphasizes the process of thinking about the thoughts that the other indi-

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vidual is thinking along with an individual’s emotional state. As stated earlier, there is no guarantee in Wundt’s case that one individual’s gesture will arouse the intended response from another individual. Mead explains the social aspect and social process involved in communication as important because “the body is not a self, as such; it becomes a self only when it has developed a mind within the context of social experience” (Mead 1992, 50). This point “does not occur to Wundt, to account for the existence and development of selves and minds within, or in terms of, the social process of experience; and his presupposition of them as making possible that process, and communication within it, invalidates his analysis of that process (Mead 1992: 50). If we take Wundt’s perspective, then an individual has a mind from the very beginning, which makes and explains an individual’s social process within which experiences happen. If that is indeed the case, then Wundt’s explanation of this process would make for a murky explanation in that it could not explain the development of a mind nor could it explain the interaction between minds. However, from the perspective of Mead, humans must “regard the social process of experience as prior (in a rudimentary form) to the existence of mind and explain the origin of minds in terms of the interaction among individuals in that process, then not only the origin of minds, but also the interaction among minds cease to seem mysterious or miraculous” (Mead 1992: 50). In conclusion, the human “mind arises through communication by a conversation of gestures in a social process or context of experience—not communication through mind” (Mead 1992: 50). Mead and Defining Meaning Thus far, Mead has been concerned with how humans communicate and use gestures to adjust to one another’s responses and act with other humans. Through the use of gestures, significant gestures, and significant symbols, humans are able to call out responses and anticipate the acts of one another and then, in turn, adjust to one another in a conversation of gestures. These adjustments that take place within the conversation of gestures between humans have meaning. In fact, Mead explains that “the central factor in adjustment is meaning” (Mead 1992, 75). The concept of “meaning” that Mead describes involves understanding the relation of a gesture by a human and the behavior that arises out of the response by another individual to that gesture. If a gesture is able the elicit behavior of one individual to another then it can be said that it has meaning An alternate way to think of this concept would be “the relationship between a given stimulus—as a gesture—and the later phases of the social act of which it is an early phase constitutes the field within which meaning originates and

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exists” (Mead 1992: 76). From this perspective, “meaning is thus a development of something objectively there as a relation between certain phases of the social act; it is not a psychical addition that act and it is not an ‘idea’ as traditionally conceived” (Mead 1992: 76). Mead provides an example of his conceptualization of meaning: A gesture by one organism, the resultant of the social act in which the gesture is an early phase, and the response of another organism to the gesture to first organism, of gesture to second organism, and of gesture to subsequent phases of the given social act; and this threefold relationship constitutes the matrix within meaning arises, or which develops into the field of meaning (Mead 1992: 76). In the example, “the gesture stands for a certain resultant of the social act, a resultant to which there is a definite response on the part of the individual involved therein; so that meaning is given or stated in terms of response” (Mead 1992: 76). In addition, “meaning is implicit—if not always explicit—in the relationship among the various phases of the social act to which it refers, and out of which it develops” (Mead 1992: 76). This development of meaning occurs in the human social process through symbols or the process of symbolization. A practical example of this process is illustrated in Mead’s baby chick situation. “The chick’s response to the cluck of the mother hen is a response to the meaning of the cluck; the chick refers to danger or to food, as the case may be, and has this meaning or connotation for the chick” (Mead 1992: 77). This example can be applied to the human situation by changing the chick to a human baby and the mother hen to a human mother. In either case, the result is the same; the human baby or chick responds to the meaning of the crying or the cluck. Mead further defines meaning by stating that “the social process, as involving communication, is in a sense responsible for the appearance of new objects in the field of experience of the individual organisms implicated in that process” (Mead 1992: 77). Without people creating objects for others to respond to, there would be no meaning to derive because there would be no objects from which to create. This is a point Mead makes when he says, that there “would, for example, be no food—no edible objects—if there were no organisms which could digest it” (Mead 1992: 77). This statement addresses two concepts. The first is that objects, in relation to meaning, are important because of their ability to draw out responses. The second is that the meaning of objects plays a function in our social experience and the social process. However, there is a third component to Mead’s concept of meaning and objects. “The social process in a sense constitutes the objects to which it responds, or to which it is an adjustment” (Mead 199: 77). Mead elaborates this further by saying that “objects are constituted in terms of meanings within the social process of experience and behavior through the mutual adjustment to

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one another of the responses or actions of the various individual organisms involved in that process, an adjustment made possible by means of a conversation of gestures in the earlier evolutionary stages of that process, and of language in its later stages” (Mead 1992: 77). In Mead’s version of this process, an individual’s consciousness and the degree of how aware of the situation they are not necessities of creating meaning in our everyday experiences. This is possible because “a gesture on the part of one organism in any given social acts calls out a response on the part of another organism which is directly related to the action of the first organism and its outcome; and a gesture is a symbol of the result of the given social act of one organism in so far as it is responded to by another organism as indicating that result” (Mead 1992: 77). The point Mead makes is that “this mechanism is thus present in the social act before the emergence of consciousness or awareness of meaning occurs” because “the act or adjustive responses of the second organism gives to the gesture of the first organism the meaning which it has” (Mead 1992: 77–78). “Symbolization in this process constitutes objects not constituted before, objects which would not exist except for the context social relationships wherein symbolization occurs” (Mead 1992: 78). This statement, in relation to the conversation of gestures and objects, means that “language does not simply symbolize a situation or object which is already there in advance; it makes possible the existence or the appearance of that situation or object, for it is a part of the mechanism whereby that situation or object is created” (Mead 1992: 78). This especially applies to the social process in terms of how it relates to individual’s and their responses to gestures, the meaning derived from gestures by others, the creation of new objects, and objects that now depend on these newly created meanings. “Meaning is thus not to be conceived, fundamentally, as a state of consciousness, or as a set of organized relations existing or subsisting mentally outside the field of experience into which they enter; on the contrary, it should be conceived objectively, as having its existence entirely within this field itself” (Mead 1992: 78). Overall, this means that the response of an individual to a gesture from another individual, in any given social comes to represent the meaning of that gesture. It also represents an incoming new object or it can be an old object that a gesture refers to through the outcome of an act. Mead applies this concept to the object by explaining that “objects are in a genuine sense constituted within the social process of experience, by the communication and mutual adjustment of behavior among the individual organisms which are involved in that process and which carry it on” (Mead 1992: 78). Mead relates this concept to his earlier example of fencing. In his

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example, when someone reacts to a parry with a thrust as an interpretation of what their next move should be this adjustment by one individual to another’s gesture represents the meaning of that gesture. “At this level of selfconsciousness such a gesture becomes a symbol, a significant symbol” (Mead 1992 However, “the interpretation of gestures is not, basically, a process going on in a mind as such, or one necessarily involving a mind; it is an external, overt, physical or physiological process going on in the actual field of social experience” (Mead 1992: 79). Not only is the interpretation of gestures an external process, but also: meaning can be described, accounted for, or stated in terms of symbols or language at its highest and most complex stage of development (the stage it reaches in human experience), but language lifts out of the social process a situation which is logically or implicitly there already. The language symbol is simply a significant or conscious gesture (Mead 1992: 79). In sum, two major points are being made by Mead: that the social process, through the communication which it makes possible among the individuals implicated in it, is responsible for the appearance of a whole set of new objects in nature, which exist in relation to it (objects, namely, of “common sense”); and that the gesture of one organism and the adjustive response of another organism to that gesture within any given social act bring out the relationship that exists between the gesture as the beginning of the given act and the completion or resultant of the given act, to which the gesture refers. These are the two basic and complementary logical aspects of the social process (Mead 1992: 79). In conclusion, “the logical structure of meaning, we have seen, is to be found in the threefold relationship of gesture to adjustive response and to the resultant of the given act” (Mead 1992: 80). The response of the second individual to the gesture of the first individual illustrates the process of interpretation, which brings out the meaning of a gesture which, in turn, leads to the result of what the social act was trying to elicit in both individuals. This triadic model “between gesture, adjustive response, and the resultant social act which the gesture initiates is the basis of meaning; for the existence of meaning depends upon the fact that the adjustive responses of the second organism is directed toward the gesture of the first organism” (Mead 1992: 80). “The basis of meaning is thus objectively there in social conduct, or in nature in its relation to such conduct. Thus, “meaning is a content of an object which is dependent upon the relation of an organism or group of organisms to it” (Mead 1992: 80).

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Mead on the Mind and the Self His approach to explaining the basis of the social self is described as social behaviorism. His primary focus is how we think. For Mead, the mind is a process, not a thing, and is found in social phenomena rather than within individuals. He theorized that the key to social experience lay in how humans think and he used the term “minding” to indicate that thinking is an ongoing, active and dialectical process of interaction between the social actor and his or her interlocutors. Contemporary symbolic interactionists do not use the Meadian concept “minding.” For Mead, the self, then, occupies a central locus of the individual development as a social animal. The self emerges from social experiences and social experience is based on the exchange of symbols. He defined the self as the ability of the social actor to take herself or himself as an object and a subject at the same time. He theorized that the way to do that is through reflexivity—the ability to put ourselves in the place of others and act as they act. Reflexivity is a mechanism for through which the individuals develop the self. It involves the social actor taking on the role of others. Role taking is similar to Weber’s verstehen, i.e., empathizing or putting oneself in the shoes of another person (Mann, 2011: 188). As indicated earlier through the discussion of Mead’s work, language is one of the most important concepts to consider in the development of the human mind and intelligence. However, the same is true in the development of the human self, a point Mead makes when he states that “the language process is essential for the development of self” (Mead 1992: 135). This perspective on the human self is unique because it conceptualizes the human self as developing out of a process. Mead emphasizes this idea by explaining that “the self is something which has a development; it is not initially there at birth but arises in the process of social experience and activity, that is, develops in the given individual as a result of his relations to that process as a whole and to each other individual within that process” (Mead 1992: 135). Though our human self-arises out of a social experience and social environment, the majority of our intelligence requires no self. According to Mead, “in our habitual actions, for example, in our moving about in a world that is simply there and to which we are so adjusted that no thinking is involved, there is a certain amount of sensuous experience such as persons have when they are just waking up, a bare thereness of the world” (Mead 1992: 135). This example illustrates the idea that human experiences can occur without the self. However, Mead warns us that “one must, of course, under those conditions, distinguish between the experience that immediately takes place and our own organization of it into the experience of the self. One says upon analysis that a certain item had its place in his experience, in the experience of his self” (Mead 1992: 135). Mead elaborates on this statement when he states that

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“we do inevitably tend at a certain level of sophistication to organize all experience into that of a self” (Mead 1992: 135). An example of this can be found in our “experiences, especially our affective experiences, with the self that it takes a moment’s abstraction to realize that pain and pleasure can be there without being the experience of the self” (Mead 1992: 135). Another example can be seen when we “organize our memories upon the string of our self. If we date things we always date them from the point of view of our past experiences. We frequently have memories that we cannot date, that we cannot place. A picture comes before us suddenly and we are at a loss to explain when that experience originally had taken place” (Mead 1992: 135-136). When this happens, “we can remember perfectly distinctly the picture, but we do not have it definitely placed, and until we can place it in terms of our past experience we are not satisfied” (Mead 1992: 136). In all three of these examples, “the self is not necessarily involved in the life of the organism, not involved in what we term sensuous experience, that is, experience in the world about us for which we have habitual reactions” (Mead 1992: 136). Before moving on with Mead’s discussion of the self, a distinction must be made between the self and the body. According to Mead, “the body can be there and can operate in a very intelligent fashion without there being a selfinvolved in the experience. The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body. The parts of the body are quite distinguishable from the self. We can lose parts of a body without any serious invasion of the self. The mere ability to experience different parts of the body is not different from the experience of a table” (Mead 1992: 136). That is, “the table presents a different feel from what the hand does when one hand feels another, but it is an experience of something with which we come definitely into contact” (Mead 1992: 136). This means that “the body does not experience itself as a whole, in the sense in which the self in some way enters into the experience of the self” (Mead 1992: 136). In retrospect, this means that “the self is an object to itself” (Mead 1992, 136). “This characteristic is represented in the word “self,” which is reflexive, and indicates that which can be both subject and object. This type of object is essentially different from other objects, and in the past, it has been distinguished as conscious, a term which indicates an experience with, an experience of, one’s self” (Mead 1992: 136–137). In other theories of the self “it was assumed that consciousness in some way carried this capacity of an object being an object to itself” (Mead 1992: 137). This is the current problem that Mead must find a solution to, that is, “in giving a social behavioristic statement of consciousness we have to look for some sort of experience in

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which the physical organism can become an object to itself” (Mead 1992: 137). The Question of Self as an Object There’s a question that Mead must solve in relation to the self as an object. “How can an individual get outside himself (experientially) in such a way as to become an object to himself?” (Mead 1992: 138). This question has been the:“[P]sychological problem of selfhood or of self-consciousness; and its solution is to be found by referring to the process of social conduct or activity in which the given person or individual is implicated,” which is a point Mead makes when he states that “the apparatus of reason would not be complete unless it swept itself into its own analysis of the field of experience; or unless the individual bought himself into the same experiential field as that of the other individuals selves in relation to whom he acts in any given social situation” (Mead 1992, 138). In this case, “reason cannot become impersonal unless it takes an objective, non- affective attitude toward itself; otherwise, we have just consciousness, not self- consciousness” (Mead 1992, 138). Also, “it is necessary to rational conduct that the individual should thus take an objective, impersonal attitude toward himself, that he should become an object to himself” (Mead 1992, 138). This means that “the individual organism is obviously an essential and important constituent element of the empirical situation in which it acts; and without taking objective account of itself as such, it cannot act intelligently, or rationally” (Mead 1992, 138). For Mead, “the individual experiences himself as such, not directly, but only indirectly, from the standpoints of other individual members of the same social group, or from the generalized standpoint of the social group as a whole to which he belongs” (1992, 138). The individual also “experiences as a self or individual, not directly or immediately, not by becoming a subject to himself, but only in so far as he first becomes an object to himself just as other individuals are objects to him or in his experience (Mead 1992, 138). When this happens an individual becomes an object to themselves but only by accepting the attitudes of other individual’s they interact with in the social world they interact within. “The importance of what we term “communication” lies in the fact that it provides a form of behavior in which the organism or the individual may become an object to himself” (Mead 1992, 138). This means that communication is important because it is responsible for the behavior that introduces an individual’s self. However, “one may hear without listening; one may see things that he does not realize; do things that he is not really aware of” (Mead 1992, 139). Though, “when one does respond to that which he addresses to

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another and where that response of his own becomes a part of his conduct, where he not only hears himself but responds to himself, talks and replies to himself as truly as the other person replies to him, that we have behavior in which the individuals become objects to themselves” (Mead 1992, 139). The Self as a Social Self According to Mead, “the self, as that which can be an object to itself, is essentially a social structure, and it arises in social experience” (Mead 1992, 140). However, “it is impossible to conceive a self-arising outside of social experience” (Mead 1992, 140). This is true for Mead because “when the self has arisen we can think of a person in solitary confinement for the rest of his life, but who still has himself as a companion, and is able to think and to converse with himself as he had communicated with others” (Mead 1992, 140).

Briefly The Self as a Social Self According to Mead, “the self, as that which can be an object to itself, is essentially a social structure, and it arises in social experience”

“This process to which I [Mead] just referred, of responding to one’s self as another responds to it, taking part in one’s own conversation with others, being aware of what one is saying and using that awareness of what one is saying to determine what one is going to say thereafter—that is a process which we are all familiar” (Mead 1992, 140). Within this process, humans “are continually following up our own address to other persons by an understanding of what we are saying, and using that understanding in the direction of our continued speech” (Mead 1992, 140). In addition, “we are also finding out what we are going to say, what we are going to do, by saying and doing, and in the process, we are continually controlling the process itself” (Mead 1992, 140). If this process is thought of in terms of the aforementioned conversation of gestures, readers can see that “what we say calls out a certain response in another and that in turn changes our own action, so that we shift from what we started to do because of the reply the other makes” (Mead 1992, 141). In this sense, the conversation carried on by gestures represents the beginning of how individuals communicate. The individual can have entire conversations of gestures with themselves and when an individual has these conversations they can also say something that will elicit a reply that can change what that individual was originally going to say. In turn, “one starts to say something, we

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will presume an unpleasant something, but when he starts to say it he realizes it is cruel” (Mead 1992, 141). Mead illustrates this process of the self as a social process in the following example: The effect on himself of what he is saying checks him; there is here a conversation of gestures between the individual and himself. We mean by significant speech that the action is one that affects the individual himself and that the effect upon the individual himself is others. Now we, so to speak, amputate that social phase and dispense with it for the time being, so that one is talking to one’s self as one would talk to another person (Mead 1992, 141). Within this social process of the self, “the process of abstraction cannot be carried on indefinitely. One inevitability seeks an audience has to pour himself out to somebody. In reflexive intelligence, one thinks to act and to act solely so that this action remains a part of a social process” (Mead 1992, 141). This means, according to Mead, that “the very process of thinking is, of course, simply an inner conversation that goes on, but it is a conversation of gestures which in its completion implies the expression of that which one thinks to an audience” (Mead 1992, 142). An example of this is quoted below: One separates the significance of what he is saying to others from the actual speech and gets it ready before saying it. He thinks it out, and perhaps writes it in the form of a book: but it is still part of social intercourse in which one is addressing other persons and at the same time addressing one’s self, and in which one controls the address to other persons by the response made to one’s own gesture (Mead 1992, 142). The idea that a human responds to himself “is necessary to the self, and it is this sort of social conduct which provides behavior within which the self appears” (Mead 1992, 142). For Mead, “there is no other form of behavior than the linguistic in which the individual is an object to himself, and, so far as I can see, the individual is not a self in the reflexive sense unless he is an object to himself… this underlying concept places a high emphasis on “communication since this is a type of behavior in which the individual does so respond to himself” (Mead 1992, 142). This fundamental belief leads Mead to proclaim that “what determines the amount of the self that gets into communication is the social experience itself” (Mead 1992, 142). Examples of this can be found, for instance, when people have relations with others on a daily basis. Each individual conversation with each person yields a different set of responses, acts, and reactions, yet more importantly, each encounter with every individual illustrates Mead’s point that “there are all sorts of different selves answering to all sorts of different social reactions” (Mead 1992, 142). Thus, “it is the social process itself that

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is responsible for the appearance of the self; it is not there as a self apart from this type of experience” (Mead 1992, 142). Generalized Other In this section, Mead’s conceptualization of the generalized other is discussed. According to Mead, “the organized community or social group which gives to the individual his unity of self may be called ‘the generalized other’” (1992, 154). Not only does the social group give the self its unity but also “the attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community” (Mead 1992, 154). An example of the generalized other can be seen “in the case of such a social group as a ball team, the team is the generalized other in so far as it enters—as an organized or social activity—in the experience of any one of the individual members of it” (Mead 1992, 154). Though, if a human is to develop a full sense of self it is not enough for an individual to take the attitudes of others towards themselves and towards one another in a social process that focuses solely on these terms. An individual “must also, in the same way that he takes the attitudes of other individuals toward himself and toward one another, take their attitudes toward the various phases or aspects of the common social activity or set of social undertakings in which, as members of an organized society or social group, they are all engaged” (Mead 1992, 154–155). If a person generalizes “these individual attitudes of that organized society or social group itself, as a whole, act toward different social projects which at any given time it is carrying out, or toward the various larger phases of the general social process which constitutes its life and of which these projects are specific manifestations” (Mead 1992, 155). The social process and social formation of the generalized other is the underlying basis of the development of an individual’s self. However, this is “only in so far as he takes the attitudes of the organized social group to which he belongs toward the organized, cooperative social activity or set of such activities in which the group as such is engaged, does he develop a complete self or possess the sort of complete self he has developed” (Mead 1992, 155). Though, “on the other hand, the complex cooperative processes and activities and institutional functions of organized human society are also possible only in so far as every individual involved in them or belonging to that society can take the general attitudes of all other such individuals with reference to these processes and institutional functioning’s” (Mead 1992, 155). The basic ideas of Mead presented in this chapter were meant to present some of the fundamental philosophical ideas of the social philosopher whose academic works influenced Symbolic Interactionist thought. While the concepts presented are in no way shape or form exhaustive, they were meant to establish a basic framework from which to work. In the next section, the focus

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will be on taking this basic framework and some of its concepts and compare and contrast the similarities and differences between them and those of Royce. This will be the first step toward investigating whether and to what degree Royce made a contribution to Symbolic Interactionist thought. The Stages of the Development of the Self The self is not the physical body; rather it is something akin to consciousness or awareness. The self is not a thing, but a social process. Mead proposed that the self can emerge only through social experience, and hence it is inseparable from society. Mead believed that the self develops by way the internalizing society through role- taking or the imitation of significant others and the generalized other. His focus was how we become sensitive to the responses of others. He noted that the self develops as individuals learn to internalize society through role-taking or modeling after others. The development of the self goes through several stages, the most important ones being those that take place during the formative years of the individual, namely the play stage and the game stage. At the play stage, the child learns how to take the attitudes of particular others to themselves, but it is only during the game stage that children learn how to take the roles of many others and the attitude of the generalized other (society at large). Mead identified the following stages in the development of the self: pre-play or pre-symbolic, play or symbolic, game and the generalized other. During the pre-play stage, the child's behavior is a combination of instinctive behavior and imitation and uses her instinct to interact with others. She is on verge of role-playing. For example, when daddy smiles, the baby will back; when daddy waves, she smiles back, without really understanding the gesture (Mann, 2011, p.118). During the play stage, the child imitates particular others, significant others. Significant others are people we are emotionally attached to in childhood, during our embryonic years, such as our parents, siblings, and other close relatives. The child sees herself or himself from others' point of view. He or she begins to realize the perspective of others, conforming, and starts to learn gender-appropriate roles. The roles at this stage are unstable and transitory. She can imitate one person at a time. In other words, the child can only play one role at a time. The child at this stage thinks in rigid and concrete terms only. For example, when an auntie who is a doctor pays a visit, she would play “doctor” when playing with her siblings or friends the next day. If her birthday fell on Tuesday this year, she would think that every Tuesday is her birthday. At this stage, the child cannot successfully play in a Little League, because when a teammate throws the ball to her, she will throw the ball back to that teammate only. She can’t imagine that she can pass the ball to other teammates as well (Mann, 2011, p. 188).

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During the game stage, the child can now play multiple roles at a time. He or she can perform multiple tasks simultaneously and understand or anticipate the expectations of others. He now can understand and follow rules. He or she can now successfully play in a Little League. In a game of hide-and-seek, the child can empathize with his peers by taking on their roles as “hiders” and “seekers.” Thus, if he /she is the one hiding, he or she would play his own role as the hider in real time as he /she plays the seeker role of his/ her peers, by putting himself in the shoes of his/her seeker colleagues. In contemporary parlance, the child can multitask at this stage. The final stage is the generalized other stage. During this stage, the adult self, more complete or unified concept of self emerges and the individual learns to handle several roles at the same time and anticipates the behavior of others. The individual completes internalizing the norms, moral codes, values, etc., of the larger society. People are seen as having multiple selves who perform multiple roles, occupy multiple statuses. At the generalized other stage it is assumed most people become successfully socialized into normal, functioning social beings (Mann, 2011, p. 189).

Briefly The “I” part represents the self as a subject. It constitutes the immediate response of an individual to others. It is the innate activeness of the self and is spontaneous, and impulsive. It constitutes the immediate response of the social actor to others. It is the “undisciplined,” unpredictable, and creative aspect of the self. The "me" is the “disciplined” and trained/socialized part of the self. It is the generalized other self, i.e., the organized set of attitude of others that a social actor assumes

The “I” and the “Me” Component of the Self One of Mead’s interesting theories is what we call the “I-Me equation of the self.” Mead theorized that the self consists of two interacting components— the "I" and the “Me”. The “I” part represents the self as a subject. It constitutes the immediate response of an individual to others.” (Ritzer, 2000, p. 354) It is the innate activeness of the self and is spontaneous, and impulsive. It constitutes the immediate response of the social actor to others. It is the “undisciplined,” unpredictable, and creative aspect of the self. The "me" is the “disciplined” and trained/socialized part of the self. It is the generalized other self, i.e., the organized set of attitudes of others that a social actor assumes. It is the embodiment of how society dominates the social actor and is a means of

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social control. The two parts of the self can be equated with two internal voices or two inner conversations going on inside the person. “Me” is the conformist aspect of the self, and the reflexive, organized aspect of the self (Mead 1934: 197). The “I” part of the self initiates a conversation or an action and the “Me” part guides the action to completion. The “Me” denotes the self as an object. It is the process of how we imagine ourselves from the perspective of someone else and our reflection on his or her own behavior. It’s the social aspect of self. According to Mann (2011, p.88) the reflective “Me” is the basis for socialization and conformity. The me phase has life experiences. The I is aware of the me, which forms the basis of who the person is. That is, the me is the part that contains all the past experiences of the person and what he/she has learned (Ashley & Orenstein, 2001, p. 405). It contains the knowledge of all the roles and situations that the individual has experienced in the past. The me part is aware of the social norms and expectations that are placed on him/her by the society and groups to which the individual belongs to. The me part is also aware of the consequences of the different actions that are open to the individual (Ashley & Orenstein, 2001, p. 405). Subjects reflect on the me part: they are conscious of it. In short, the me provides the subject with consistency “by references to social roles and values” prevalent and dominant in society (Ashley & Orenstein, 2001, p. 405). The me, then, refers to the “organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes” (sic) (Mead, as cited in Ritzer, 2000, p. 355). The me is a reflection of the generalized other, or cultural norms and values. The me is a reflection of the habitual individuals who is conventional and acts according to the expectations of one’s society and culture (Ritzer, 2000, p. 355). That is, society dominates and controls the behavior of individuals through the me. Social control happens when the me dominates the I. The me “allows individuals to live comfortably in the social world, while the ‘I’ makes the change of society possible” (Ritzer, 2000, p. 355). The me is involved in self-criticism based on the societal and cultural expectations. Let’s use this example to illustrate the “I-Me” theory: Let’s assume that at the end of a rather run-of-the-mill and boring lecture, your professor told the class with a beaming smile “This was an exciting lecture”. But you know in your heart that the lecture was, on the contrary, very boring. Your knee-jerk reaction would be to stand up and tell your professor off with a retort: “No that’s a lie; your lecture was boring to death!” But you don’t do that. Instead, you nod feebly with a sheepish grin and respond: “Yes, the lecture was indeed interesting.” You tell yourself it is rude to something like that to your professor. Your professor could punish you in one way or the other, and your fellow

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classmates might regard you as disrespectful and uncouth. Your knee-jerk reaction that tempted or prodded you to tell your professor off is the “I” part of yourself. It is the active, creative and spontaneous part of yourself, while the inner voice that warned you of the consequences of your action is the “Me” component of yourself. According to Mead, social experience is a continuous interplay of the “I” and “Me.” Our actions are spontaneous, yet they are guided by how others would respond to us. In general, the me could be viewed as the judgmental part of the self that is concerned with self-censorship and determining how to act (Ashley & Orenstein, 2001, p. 405). For example, after an exam in which you think you have done very well in, the I part of yourself wants to announce it to the whole world: “I am so smart. I am going to get an A on my Calculus exam.” As you are approaching your friends who also took the same exam, you notice that their faces are “sad” and as you listen to the conversations you note that they all think the exam was hard and that they most probably failed the exam. At this moment, the me part of the self appears and based on the accepted social conventions of the generalized other (general cultural norms) that teaches one should be sensitive to the feelings of other people and deters you from expressing the emotions that the I part of the self wants so desperately to act out. In this sense, Mead viewed self-criticism as a reflection of social criticism “and behavior controlled socially” (Mead, as cited in Ritzer, 2000, p. 355). In conclusion, Mead (Powers, 2004, p. 113-114) argued that, 1) 2)

3)

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Individuals are capable of observing other peoples gestures and what they mean. As individual make sense of the meanings associated with the gestures of other people, they take the role of the other person to determine what the gestures actually mean. As we account for the views of others in a social situation, we are also involved in self-reflection since we consider how other people react to us. We consider how we appear to others. We become engaged in considering how to react in a situation based on a series of actions that are open to us based on our analysis and understanding of the above stages and the outcome we want to produce.

“Having gone through these various mental exercises based on the interpretation of the actions of others, we must then take the step of modifying our own contact as we continue the interaction”.

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Box 4:2 - The reflexive self • • • •

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Self-aware individual is one who consciously acts in the world. The reflexive individual emerges from processes of meaning-making, interpretation and social interaction. Humans generating signs or communicative codes via language (i.e., 'symbolic communication’) Firstly, the signs and symbols that constitute language allow people to develop a common symbolic and conceptual store, which allows for nuanced and complex levels of negotiation. Through social interaction, people learn meanings and symbols that allow them to exercise thought. As people can develop subtle and complex forms of communication, they also enable more complex interactions to take place. Meanings and symbols allow people to carry out human action and interactions People alter meaning and symbols they use in interaction Language and communication deepens our capacity to become reflexive (self-aware and aware of others) In addition to 'talking to others' we engage in 'talking to ourselves', that is, engaging in internal conversations when we are making decisions. The intertwined effects of action and interaction make up groups and societies. Thus, 'symbolic communication' is central to the ways that we make meaning This also reflects the SI claim that society amounts to the creative activity and that social change is brought about by processes of interaction

Chapter Summary George Herbert Mead “The Father” of Symbolic Interactionism • •

Mead proposed that mind, self, and other unique features of humans evolve from efforts to survive in the social environment. Utilitarianism also assumes that human action is rational. That is, in deciding their actions or judgments, they base them on the relevant information that has been gathered; consider the consequences of various types of conduct; and choose the action that will yield the most utility and benefit

Mead as a Behaviorist •

Behaviorism derives from the premise that reinforcement guides and directs human action. Meadian behaviorism is distinct from, and refutation of the mechanical stimulus/ response type developed by John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner.

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• • • •

He developed the field of social behaviorism as a way to debunk the ideas of radical behaviorists. Mead argued that unlike animal behavior, human behavior goes beyond the simplistic stimulus-response mechanism. Significant gestures are gestures that involve thought before a response, in the same way as looking before leaping. Significant symbols are symbols that have shared meanings for those involved in social intercourse.

Mead as a Pragmatist • •

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Meadian pragmatism was by the well-known American educationist John Dewey. Pragmatism was concerned with how the process of thinking inclined individuals to act in certain ways and how actions of individuals had consequences for the thought processes of individuals It viewed social interaction as a process that enabled humans to adapt to their social environments and to achieve their goals. Mead adopted from the pragmatists three important themes: a focus on the interaction between actors and the social world a view of both actors and the social world as dynamic processes, and the centrality of actors' ability to interpret the social world.

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Another pragmatist who also influenced Mead’s ideas was William James.

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James argued that thought enables the individual to deal with the external world, and it is selective as it emphasizes some objects and excludes others.

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Self and mind are dialectically related to one another

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Our self-concepts are influenced by how we see ourselves in various social contexts and interactions.

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Reflexivity implies the capacity to place ourselves unconsciously into other’ positions and to behave, view the world, and act as they normally do

Mead as a Darwinist •

Mead gleaned and distilled several basic assumptions from Darwinism to form his symbolic interactionist theory.

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He proposed that humans are organisms seeking a niche in which they can adapt. humans discover a niche in the social world. an element that facilitates survival or adaptation of the organism will be retained. Socialization is the process through which individuals learn the norms and values of society.. Agents of primary socialization are parents, siblings (a child has any) and other close relatives, such as aunties, uncles, and grandparents. Agents of secondary socialization include school, the media, church, friendship circles, etc. Socialization is continuous beginning from the cradle to the grave, from infancy to adulthood. Socialization creates our core qualities of symbols, self, and mind.

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Mead: The Behaviorist •

Social behaviorism (the main perspective of Mind, Self, and Society (1934)) “is behavioristic, but unlike Watsonian behaviorism it recognizes the parts of the act which do not come to external observation, and it emphasizes the act of the human individual in its natural social situation” (Mead 1992, 8). This quote illustrates that Mead has a more solidified perspective than previous attempts at defining and creating the major tenets of social psychology and social behaviorism. In the next section of this chapter, the basic tenets and ideas that further the explanation, definition, and discussion of Mead’s social behaviorism and conceptualization of Symbolic Interactionism are discussed.

The Stages of the Development of the Self • • •

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The self is not the physical body; rather it is something akin to consciousness or awareness The self develops by way the internalizing society through rol- taking or the imitation of significant others and the generalized other. The development of the self goes through several stages, the most important ones being those that take place during the formative years of the individual, namely the play stage and the game stage. At the play stage, the child learns how to take the attitudes of particular others to themselves, but it is only during the game stage that children learn how to take the roles of many others and the attitude of the generalized other (society at large).

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•

•

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Mead identified the following stages in the development of the self: pre-play or pre-symbolic, play or symbolic, game and the generalized other. Significant others. are people we are emotionally attached to in childhood, during our embryonic years, such as our parents, siblings, and other close relatives. During generalized other stage, the adult self, more complete or unified concept of self emerges and the individual learns to handle several roles at the same time and anticipates the behavior of others.

The “I” and the “Me” Component of the Self The “I” part represents the self as a subject. It constitutes the immediate response of an individual to others. It is the innate activeness of the self and is spontaneous, and impulsive. It constitutes the immediate response of the social actor to others. The “Me” denotes the self as an object. It is the process of how we imagine ourselves from the perspective of someone else and our reflection on his or her own behavior. It’s the social aspect of self. Mead proposed that, • •

•

•

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Individuals are capable of observing other peoples gestures and what they mean. As individual make sense of the meanings associated with the gestures of other people, they take the role of the other person to determine what the gestures actually mean. As we account for the views of others in social in a given situation, we are also involved in self-reflection since we consider how other people react to us. We consider how we appear to others. We become engaged in considering how to react in a situation based on a series of actions that are open to us based on our analysis and understanding of the above stages and the outcome we want to produce. “Having gone through these various mental exercises based on the interpretation of the actions of others, we must then take the step of modifying our own contact as we continue the interaction”.

Chapter Five: Herbert Blumer and Symbolic Interactionism Over the years, sociology has developed a myriad of theories (of various ranges) that assist in the explanation of the social world. Though these social/cultural theories are constantly changing, there are several that have withstood the test of time. These few select theories are studied under the sub-discipline known as Classical Sociological Theory. One such theory, Symbolic Interactionism, has developed into a mainstay within the discipline and a research perspective of many sociologists and academics around the world. This chapter investigates and explores the depths of what is meant by Symbolic Interactionist theory through the work of sociologist Herbert Blumer. The main purpose of studying Blumer’s definition of Symbolic Interactionism is of a threefold nature: First, to discuss his contribution beyond classical (Mead-based) Symbolic Interactionism; second, to investigate the details of Blumer’s definition beyond his three basic premises, and third, to explore the use of Blumer’s definition of Symbolic Interactionism. Defining Symbolic Interactionism The definition of Symbolic Interactionism to be investigated comes from Blumer. Blumer originated and coined the term Symbolic Interactionism accidentally in 1937 when he used the term in the article, “Man and Society” (Blumer 1969, 1). According to Blumer’s definition of Symbolic Interactionism, there are only three major premises: (1) The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them (Blumer 1969, 2) (2) The second premise is that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows (Blumer 1969, 2) (3) The third premise is that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters (Blumer 1969, 2).

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Blumer in the book, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969), systematically explains and explores each of these premises in detail. The first premise that “human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them” appears to be very straightforward, and “it would seem that few scholars would see anything wrong with this first premise, et oddly enough, this simple view is ignored or played down in practically all of the thought and work in contemporary social science and psychological science” (Blumer 1969, 2). This view is downplayed in both psychology and sociology as psychologists and sociologists have a “tendency to treat human behavior as the product of various factors that play upon human beings; the concern is with the behavior and with the factors regarded as producing them” (Blumer 1969, 3). Psychologists look for such factors when they conduct research projects that focus on “stimuli, attitudes, conscious or unconscious motives, various kinds of inputs, perception, and cognition, and various features of personal organization to account for given forms or instances of human conduct” (Blumer 1969, 3). While psychologists focus on individualized and mental-based factors in their assessments of the ways human beings act in relation to the meanings of things, sociologists focus on different factors. Sociologists “rely on such factors as social position status demands, social roles, cultural prescriptions, norms and values, social pressures, and group affiliations” (Blumer 1969, 3). The sociological factors used in assessing the way humans act in relation to meaning centers on group and larger cultural factors rather than individual and mental phenomena. Though both psychology and sociology use different factors (either individualized or cultural) in their assessment of human meaning, neither avoids the problem of being a mere one-way process. For instance, the factors assessed in psychology are limiting because “if one declares that the given kinds of behavior are the result of the particular factors regarded as producing them, there is no need to concern oneself with the meaning of the things toward which human beings act; one merely identifies the initiating factors and the resulting behavior” (Blumer 1969, 3). Sociology suffers from a similar problem in that “it seeks to accommodate the element of meaning by lodging it in the initiating factors or by regarding it as a neutral link intervening between the initiating factors and the behavior they are alleged to produce” (Blumer 1969, 3). Both of these social-science perspectives fall into the trap of only assessing one way in which to derive meaning. In psychology, there is the problem of “meaning disappearing because it is merged into the initiating or causative factors,” whereas in sociology, there is the problem of “meaning becoming a mere transmission link that can be ignored in favor of the initiating factors”

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(Blumer 1969, 3). The limiting process of deriving meaning that psychology and sociology suffer can be fixed through the use of Symbolic Interactionism. According to Blumer, “the position of Symbolic Interactionism is that the meaning that things have for human beings are central in their own right” (Blumer 1969, 3). In other words, Symbolic Interactionism fuses together the ideas of psychology and sociology in relation to deriving meaning. However, that is not the only premise that establishes Symbolic Interactionism’s unique character. The second major premise of Symbolic Interactionism, according to Blumer, is “that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows” (Blumer 1969, 2). This premise basically “refers to the source of meaning” that humans are involved in creating (Blumer 1969, 3). For Blumer, there are two ways in which meaning is created. The first way “is to regard meaning as being intrinsic to the thing that has it, as being part of the objective make-up of the thing” (Blumer 1969, 3). This principle can be illustrated by the example that a car is a car; a snowflake is a snowflake, etc. These examples hint at the notion that “meaning emanates, so to speak, from the thing and as such there is no process involved in its formation; all that is necessary is to recognize the meaning that is there in the thing” (Blumer 1969, 4). In philosophy, this manner of creating sources of meaning is properly termed “realism” (Blumer 1969, 4). The second way in which humans create sources of meaning focuses on viewing “‘meaning’ as a psychical accretion brought to the thing by the person for whom the thing has meaning. This psychical accretion is treated as being an expression of the constituent elements of the person’s psyche, mind, or psychological organization” (Blumer 1969, 4). Examples of the so-called constituent elements in this process would be “things such as sensations, feelings, ideas, memories, motives, and attitudes” (Blumer 1969, 4). A simpler way to view this process of the creating of meaning would be that “the meaning of a thing is but the expression of the given psychological elements that are brought into play in connection with the perception of the thing; thus one seeks to explain the meaning of a thing by isolating the particular psychological elements that produce meaning” (Blumer 1969, 4). Though this particular process of creating meaning served as a model for psychology and other social sciences earlier in their existence; it is not without one major criticism. This is that “by lodging the meanings of things in psychological elements (constituents) this can limit the processes of the formation of meaning to whatever processes are involved in arousing and bringing together the given psychological elements that produce the meaning” (Blumer 1969, 4). The limiting factors presented in the “realist” and “psychical” explanations of the creation of the sources of meaning led Blumer to explain how Symbolic

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Interactionism differs from both. Symbolic Interactionism “views meaning as having a different source than those held by the two dominant views considered above” because Symbolic Interactionism “does not regard meaning as emanating from the intrinsic makeup of the thing that has meaning; nor does it see meaning as arising through a coalescence of psychological elements in the person” (Blumer 1969, 4). Instead of Symbolic Interactionism becoming trapped in an either/or situation like the “realism” and “psychical” elements, it takes on a middle of the road approach. The Symbolic Interactionist perspective “sees meaning as arising out of the process of interaction between people” (Blumer 1969, 4). This means that symbolic interactionists view “the meaning of a thing for a person as growing out of the ways in which other persons act toward the person with regard to the thing, this also means that actions operate to define the thing for the person” (Blumer 1969, 4). This also means that for Symbolic Interactionism, meaning is considered to be “social products, creations that are formed in and through the defining activities of people as they interact” (Blumer 1969, 5). The above statement places Symbolic Interactionism in a unique perspective because it has larger implications on the perspective as a whole. The third major premise that Blumer discusses “is that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters” (Blumer 1969, 2). A common mistake made by many scholars in respect to this premise is that many perceive that “the meaning of things is formed in the context of social interaction and is delivered by the person from that interaction, however, it is a mistake to think that the use of meaning by a person is but an application of the meaning so derived” (Blumer 1969, 5). Meaning created by a person is not merely an application of the meaning at hand because this perspective fails to “see that the use of meanings by a person in his action involves an interpretive process” (Blumer 1969, 5). The idea of an “interpretive process” is a major underlying premise of the Symbolic Interactionist perspective. This process of interpretation can be defined as having two essential parts. First, “the actor indicates to himself the things toward which he is acting; he has to point that out to himself the things that have meaning” (Blumer 1969, 5). The creation of such indicators rests in “an internalized social process in that the actor is interacting with himself. This interaction with himself is something other than an interplay of psychological elements; it is an instance of the person engaging in a process of communication with himself” (Blumer 1969, 5). The second essential part of the process of interpretation involves the notion that “interpretation becomes a matter of handling meanings” (Blumer 1969, 5). That is to say, “the actor selects, checks, suspends, regroups and

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transforms the meanings in the light of the situation in which he is placed and the direction of his action” (Blumer 1969, 5). In addition, it should be noted that “interpretation should not be regarded as a mere automatic application of established meanings, but as a formative process in which meanings are used and revised as instruments for the guidance and formation of action” (Blumer 1969, 5). With this being said, “it is necessary to see that meanings play their part in action through a process of self-interaction” (Blumer 1969, 5). Root Images Though these three basic premises provide an overview of the definition of Symbolic Interactionism, there is much more to it than that. In Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969), Blumer investigated “a number of basic ideas, or “root images” (6) that further depict and describe the ideas that represent the Symbolic Interactionist perspective. The next section of this investigation into the definition of classical Symbolic Interactionism will provide an overview of the “root images that refer to and depict the nature of the following matters; human groups or societies, social interaction, objects, the human being as an actor, human action, and the interconnection of the lines of action” ((Blumer 1969, 6). The Nature of Human Group Life The first basic “root image” of Symbolic Interactionism is titled the “Nature of Human group life” (Blumer 1969, 6). According to Blumer, “human groups are seen as consisting of human beings who are engaging in action. Human action consists of the multitudinous activities that individuals perform in their lives as they encounter one another and as they deal with the succession of situations confronting them” (Blumer 1969, 6). Thus, human action is not merely based on what we do as individuals, as often indicated in psychology. Instead, human action occurs on an individual level, a group level, and a societal level. Blumer takes this idea one step further when he states that “activities belong to the acting individuals and are carried on by them always with regard to the situations in which they have to act” (Blumer 1969, 6). This means that from a Symbolic Interactionist perspective, human action and activities are not only derived from several different social levels but they are also dependent on the situation and context of the situation at hand. Thus, in Symbolic Interactionism, “human groups or society exists in action and must be seen in terms of action” (Blumer 1969, 6). For Blumer, this is an essential point because “human society as action must be the starting point (and the point of return) for any scheme that purports to treat and analyze human society empirically.

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Conceptual schemes that depict society in some other fashion can only be derivations from the complex of ongoing activity that constitutes group life” (Blumer 1969, 6). Derivations, such as these, can be found in sociology when we consider the two fundamental “conceptions of society; that of culture, and that of social structure” (Blumer 1969, 6). In Sociology, the term culture, regardless of its definition, “is clearly derived from what people do (Blumer 1969, 6). While the concept of society, regardless of its definition, “refers to relationships derived from how people act toward each other” (Blumer 1969, 7). This combination of culture and society represents the “complex ongoing activity that establishes and portrays structure or organization” (Blumer 1969, 7). Though the combination of culture and society plays an important role in our actions and activities, it falls short in one aspect of the basic ideas of Symbolic Interactionism. This is because “a cardinal principle of Symbolic Interactionism is that any empirically-orientated scheme of human society, however, derived, must respect the fact that in the first and last instances human society consists of people engaging in action. To be empirically valid, the scheme must be consistent with the nature of the social action of human beings” (Blumer 1969, 7). The point Blumer makes in this quotation is that regardless of whether we are engaged in culture or society, the process in which we derive our actions and activities is based within a constant ongoing process that is contextual (situational). Nature of Social Interaction The second “root image” Blumer discusses is the “Nature of Social Interaction” (Blumer 1969, 7). Human social interaction, regardless of culture, takes place within groups that can be either small or large in character. In this sense, our life consists of groups and groups contain individual lives. This point is made when Blumer states that “group life necessarily presupposes interaction between the group members; or, put otherwise, a society consists of individuals interacting with one another” (Blumer 1969, 7). Though this point seems rather elementary, “social interaction is usually taken for granted and treated as having little if any, significance in its own right” (Blumer 1969, 7). This lack of significance can be seen in the social sciences, especially in the areas of psychology and sociology. It happens in these fields because both social sciences often “treat social interaction as merely a medium through which the determinants of behavior pass to produce the behavior” (Blumer 1969, 7). For example, sociology attributes social interaction “behavior to such factors as status position, cultural prescriptions, norms, values, sanctions, role demands, and social system requirements; explanation in terms of such fac-

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tors suffices without paying attention to social interaction that their play necessarily supposes,” whereas psychology attributes social interaction to “factors such as motives, attitudes, hidden complexes, elements of psychological organization, and psychological processes that are used to account for behavior without any need of considering social interaction” (Blumer 1969, 7). The one-way process of social interaction that both psychology and sociology use to explain human behavior does not fit the conceptual ideas of Symbolic Interactionism. They do not fit because each of these social sciences is suggesting that “social interaction becomes a mere forum through which sociological or psychological determinants move to bring about given forms of human behavior” (Blumer 1969, 7). Blumer disagrees with such a statement because “SI does not merely give a ceremonious nod to social interaction; it recognizes social interaction to be of vital importance in its own right” (Blumer 1969, 8). Thus, for Symbolic Interactionism, “social interaction is a process that forms human conduct, instead of being merely a means or a setting for the expression or release of human conduct” (Blumer 1969, 8). An alternate way to think of this statement would be that “human beings interacting with one another have to take into account what each other is doing or is about to do; they are forced to direct their own conduct or handle their situations in terms of what they take into account” (Blumer 1969, 8). In summary, Symbolic Interactionism focuses on how “a human society or group consists of people in association. Such association exists necessarily in the form of people acting toward one another and thus engaging in social interaction” (Blumer 1969, 10). The interactions that humans participate in are “characteristically and predominately on the symbolic level; as individuals acting individually, collectively, as agents of some organization encounter one another, they are necessarily required to take account of the actions of one another as they form their own action” (Blumer 1969, 10). This is done on a daily basis through “a dual process of indicating to others how to act and of interpreting the indications made by others” (Blumer 1969, 10). Nature of Objects Blumer’s third “root image” of Symbolic Interactionism can be found in the “Nature of Objects” (Blumer 1969, 10). In the Symbolic Interactionist perspective, “the ‘worlds’ that exist for human beings and for their groups are composed of ‘objects’; these objects are the product of Symbolic Interactionism” (Blumer 1969, 10). According to Blumer, an object can be defined as “anything that can be indicated, anything that is pointed to or referred to—a cloud, a book, a legislature, a banker, a religious doctrine, a ghost, and so forth” (Blumer 1969, 10). The “objects” that Blumer discusses can be arranged into three separate categories. (1) “Physical objects, such as chairs, trees, or bicy-

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cles; (2) Social objects, such as students, priests, a president, a mother, or a friends, and; (3) Abstract objects, such as moral principles, philosophical doctrines, or ideas such as justice, exploration, or compassion” (Blumer 1969, 10–11). For Blumer, the nature of an “object,” regardless of which category it may fall into, “consists of the meaning that it has for the person for whom it is an object” (Blumer 1969, 11). That is, “meaning sets the way in which he sees the object, the way in which he is prepared to act toward it, and the way in which he is ready to talk about it” (Blumer 1969, 11). In addition, “an object may have a different meaning for different individuals” (Blumer 1969, 11). An example of this can be seen in everyday life: An animal means something different to a zoologist, a person passing by this animal, the people at animal control, and an artist’s rendition of the animal at hand. In each of these cases, the animal that stands before them means something quite different to each person. This is not to say that “objects” are derived merely from individual interpretation or opinions of the “object” at hand. In fact, “the meanings of objects for a person can arise fundamentally out of the way they are defined to him by others with whom he interacts” (Blumer 1969, 11). Blumer takes this statement one step further and proclaims that “out of a process of mutual indications common objects emerge—objects that have the same meaning for a given set of people and are seen in the same manner by them” (Blumer 1969, 11). This perspective, the Symbolic Interactionist perspective, of “objects,” has several larger implications that are not immediately apparent from this discussion. One implication of Blumer’s view on “objects” is that it challenges the traditional notion that “the environment consists only of objects that the given human being recognizes and knows” (Blumer 1969, 11). In Symbolic Interactionism, “the nature of this environment (world) is set by the meaning that the objects composing it have for those human beings” (Blumer 1969, 11). This means that “in order to understand the action of people it is necessary to identify their world of objects” (Blumer 1969, 110) The second implication of this perspective on “objects” is that “objects” (in the sense of their meaning) must be seen as social creation—as being formed in and arising out of the process of definition and interpretation as this process takes place in the interaction of people” (Blumer 1969, 11–12). The point Blumer makes with this statement that “the meaning of anything and everything has to be formed, learned, and transmitted through a process of indication—a process that is necessarily a social process” (Blumer 1969, 12). Overall, this means that the perspective of Symbolic Interactionism views “human group life as a process in which objects are being created, affirmed, trans-

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formed, and cast aside. This, in turn, also means that the life and action of people change in line with the changes taking place in their world of objects” (Blumer 1969, 12). Humans as Acting Organisms The fourth “root image” of Symbolic Interactionism falls under the section titled “The Human Being as an Acting Organism” (Blumer 1969, 12). As stated earlier, “SI recognizes that human beings must have a makeup that fits the nature of social interaction” (Blumer 1969, 12). Also as stated earlier, a “human being is seen as an organism that not only responds to others on the non-symbolic level but as one that makes indications to others and interprets their indications” (Blumer 1969, 12). These two statements detached from one another do not mean much. However, if you synthesize both of these Symbolic Interactionist statements, the formation of a “self” or the idea that “human beings can be the object of their own actions” (Blumer 1969, 12) begins to emerge. Not only do human beings possess the ability to be objects of their own actions, but they can also “recognize themselves, for instance, a person can see himself as being a man, young in age, a student, in debt, trying to become a doctor, coming from an undistinguished family and so forth” (Blumer 1969, 12). In each of the aforementioned examples, a person can be “an object to oneself and act towards oneself and guide oneself in their actions towards others on the basis of the kind of object you are to yourself” (Blumer 1969, 12). Though the “self” is a different type of object, it still retains a very important property that the other categorized objects possess, and that is that “like other objects the self-object emerges from the process of social interaction in which other people are defining a person to himself” (Blumer 1969, 12). The “self” that human beings develop not only functions as an object but it also “enables humans to interact with themselves” (Blumer 1969, 13). This interaction with one’s own self—a sort of internal conversation—has nothing to do with psychologically being between two minds or being between two distinct sets of concepts, ideas, notions, attitudes, feelings, etc. “Instead, the interaction is social—a form of communication with the person addressing himself as a person and responding thereto” (Blumer 1969, 13). According to Blumer, “we can clearly recognize such interaction in ourselves as each of us notes that he is angry with himself, or that he has to spur himself on in his tasks, or that he reminds himself to do this or that, or that he is talking to himself in working out some plan of action” (Blumer 1969, 13). Whenever humans participate in these self-interactions, they are essentially “making indications to oneself” (Blumer 1969, 13). These indications take place in our everyday lives on a grand scale; Blumer makes this point when he states that “one’s

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waking life consists of a series of such indications that the person is making to himself” (Blumer 1969, 13). Uniqueness of the Nature of Human Action The fifth “root image” of Symbolic Interactionism centers on the very “Nature of Human Action” itself (Blumer 1969, 15). According to Blumer, the nature of human action is unique because “the capacity of human beings to make indications to themselves gives a distinctive character to human action” (Blumer 1969, 15). This distinctive character “means that the human individual confronts a world that he must interpret in order to act instead of an environment to which he responds because of his organization” (Blumer 1969, 15). The position that Symbolic Interactionism takes on human action focuses on how “people have to cope with the situations in which they are called on to act, ascertaining the meaning of the actions of others mapping out our own line of action in the light of such interpretation” (Blumer 1969, 15). This, in turn, means that “people have to construct and guide their actions instead of merely releasing [them] in response to factors playing on them or operating through them; even though humans may do a miserable job in constructing their actions, they are indeed able to construct them” (Blumer 1969, 15). The Symbolic Interactionist perspective on human action “stands sharply in contrast to the view of human action that dominates current psychological and social sciences” (Blumer 1969, 15). Though the Symbolic Interactionist perspective on action differs vastly from the traditional views of social science, it is still incomplete. One aspect of the nature of human action that must be taken into account is that “we must recognize that the activity of human beings consists of meeting a flow of situations in which they have to act and that their action is built on the basis of what they note, how they assess and interpret what they note, and what kind of protected lines of action they map out” (Blumer 1969, 16). A second aspect of the nature of human action that must be taken into account is that “though, a human actor takes into account the mapping of his line of action. The initiating factor does not embrace or explain how it and other matters are taken into account in the situation that calls for action” (Blumer 1969, 16). Essentially, the second aspect is hinting at the idea that “one has to get inside of the defining process of the actor in order to understand his action” (Blumer 1969, 16). “This view of human action applies equally well to joint or collective action in which numbers of individuals are implicated” (Blumer 1969, 16). It applies equally because “joint behavior does not lose its character of being constructed through an interpretative process in meeting situations in which the collectivity is called on to act” (Blumer 1969, 16). This statement remains true

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“whether the collectivity be an army engaged in a campaign, a corporation seeking to expand its operations, or a nation trying to correct an unfavorable balance of trade, it (the collectivity) needs to construct its action through an interpretation of what is happening in its area of operation” (Blumer 1969, 16). Overall, this means that “the interpretive process takes place by participants making indications to one another, not merely each to himself. Joint or collective action is an outcome of such a process of interpretive interaction” (Blumer 1969, 16). Interlinkage of Action The sixth and final “root image” is the “Interlinkage of Action” (Blumer 1969, 16). As stated earlier, “human group life consists of, and exists in, the fitting of lines of action to each other by the members of the group” (Blumer 1969, 16– 17). These “lines of action” give rise to and constitute “joint action”—a societal organization of conduct of different acts of diverse participants” (Blumer 1969, 17). The “joint actions” that Blumer discusses can be described as having “a distinctive character in their own right, a character that lies in the articulation or linkage as apart from what may be articulated or linked” (Blumer 1969, 17). This means that “joint action” can be assessed and discussed without breaking each action into separate parts or pieces. Examples of this principle are illustrated in everyday life “when we speak of such things as marriage, a trading transaction, war, a parliamentary discussion, or a church service” (Blumer 1969, 17). Examples such as these allow symbolic interactionists “to speak of the collectivity—that humans engage in joint action without having to identify the individual members of that collectivity” (Blumer 1969, 17). This Symbolic Interactionist conception of “joint action” should be the focus and “domain of the social scientist” (Blumer 1969, 17). As important as the study of “joint action” should be to social science, Blumer warns that there are problems which every researcher must avoid. The first warning that he issues is that “in dealing with collectivities and with joint action one can easily be trapped in an erroneous position by failing to recognize that the joint action of the collectivity is an inter-linkage of the separate acts of the participants” (Blumer 1969, 17). This oversight made by many social scientists and researchers “leads [them] to overlook the fact that a joint action always has to undergo a process of formation; even though it may be a well-established and repetitive form of social action, each instance of it has to be formed anew” (Blumer 1969, 17). The second warning that Blumer issues about “joint-action” is that “this career of formation through which it (action) comes into being necessarily takes place through the dual process of designation and interpretation” (Blumer

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1969, 17). This being said, “the participants (whether collectively or individually) have to guide their respective acts by forming and using meanings” (Blumer 1969, 17). With the admittance of these two common mistakes made when studying “joint action,” we can now move on two a more advanced study of the subject. In the final section of Blumer’s investigation into the sixth “root image,” the “Interlinkage of Action” (Blumer 1969, 16), he makes “three observations into what constitutes joint action” (1969, 17). The first observation he makes centers on the idea that joint action can be “repetitive and stable” (Blumer 1969, 17). That is, “the preponderant portion of social action in a human society, particularly in a settled society, exists in the form of recurrent patterns of joint action” (Blumer 1969, 17). Another way to conceptualize this idea comes from Blumer in that, “most situations in which people act toward one another they have in advance a firm understanding of how to act and of how other people will act” (Blumer 1969, 17). Overall, this means that majority of our joint actions toward our self and others is preplanned. This happens because humans “share common and pre-established meanings of what is expected in the action of the participants, and accordingly, each participant is able to guide his own behavior by such meanings” (Blumer 1969, 17). His second observation on the subject of interlinkage in relation to “joint action” deals with the notion that an “extended connection of actions makes up much of human group life” Blumer 1969, 19). According to Blumer, “we are familiar with these large complex networks of action involving an interlinkage and interdependency of diverse actions of diverse people—as in the division of labor” (Blumer 1969, 19). For example, there is an extended group of actions involved in a dairy farmer milking a cow and the milk’s eventual arrival at a store. However, examples and instances of extended group actions preoccupy a greater importance in social science than applying to the here and now, the everyday. These actions “also give substance to the idea that human group life has the character of a system” (Blumer 1969, 19). The third and final point about “joint action” is “that any instance of a joint action, whether newly formed or long-established has necessarily risen out of a background of previous actions of the participants” (Blumer 1969, 20). In essence, this means that “a new kind of joint action never comes into existence apart from such a background” (Blumer 1969, 20). This, in turn, means that “the participants involved in the formation of a new joint action always bring to that formation the world of objects, the sets of meanings, and the schemes of interpretation that they already possess” (Blumer 1969, 20). In sum, “joint action always emerges out of and is connected with a context of previous action” (Blumer 1969, 20).

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Conclusions The definition of Symbolic Interactionism that Blumer presents in Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969) represents an attempt at systematically laying out the major core concepts of the perspective known as Symbolic Interactionism. Not only does Blumer focus on defining the term, he elaborates the “root images” that sharpen and clarify the backbone of the perspective. While many other definitions for Symbolic Interactionism exist, there are two major reasons why Blumer’s ideas are central to the research at hand. The reason Blumer’s definition, core concepts, and root images are of primary interest to us is that none of the other earlier scholars presented a systematic approach. Blumer’s Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969) represents “the basic premises of the point of view and to develop[‘s] the methodological consequences for the studying of human group life” (Blumer 1969, 78). In sum, Blumer’s overall aim/goal of laying out the principles and roots of Symbolic Interactionism was accomplished by through this work. Chapter summary •

• •

• •

According to Blumer’s definition of Symbolic Interactionism, there are only three major premises: o The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them o The second premise is that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows o The third premise is that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters The Nature of Human Group Life: The first basic “root image” of Symbolic Interactionism is titled the “Nature of Human group life Human groups are seen as consisting of human beings who are engaging in action. Human action consists of the multitudinous activities that individuals perform in their lives as they encounter one another and as they deal with the succession of situations confronting them” In Symbolic Interactionism, “human groups or society exists in action and must be seen in terms of action” Nature of Social Interaction: Our life consists of groups and groups contain individual lives. This point is made when Blumer states that

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“group life necessarily presupposes interaction between the group members; or, put otherwise, a society consists of individuals interacting with one another” • Symbolic Interactionism focuses on how “a human society or group consists of people in association. Such association exists necessarily in the form of people acting toward one another and thus engaging in social interaction” • Nature of Objects: In the Symbolic Interactionist perspective, “the ‘worlds’ that exist for human beings and for their groups are composed of ‘objects’—things that can be indicated, …pointed to or referred to—a cloud, a book, a legislature, a banker, a religious doctrine, a ghost, and so forth” • Three separate categories of objects. (1) “Physical objects, such as chairs, trees, or bicycles; (2) Social objects, such as students, priests, a president, a mother, or a friends, and; (3) Abstract objects, such as moral principles, philosophical doctrines, or ideas such as justice, exploration, or compassion” • Humans as Acting Organisms: “SI recognizes that human beings must have a makeup that fits the nature of social interaction” A “human being is seen as an organism that not only responds to others on the non-symbolic level but as one that makes indications to others and interprets their indications • Uniqueness of the Nature of Human Action: The nature of human action is unique because “the capacity of human beings to make indications to themselves gives a distinctive character to human action” • The human individual confronts a world that he must interpret in order to act instead of an environment to which he responds because of his organization” • Interlinkage of Action: Human group life consists of, and exists in, the fitting of lines of action to each other by the members of the group These “lines of action” give rise to and constitute “joint action”—a societal organization of conduct of different acts of diverse participants.

Chapter Six: Charles Horton Cooley’s Looking Glass Self Cooley refined and narrowed James' notion of self and forced the recognition that it arises from symbolic communication with others in group contexts. He offered two significant extensions in the analysis of self. (a) The self is the process in which individuals see themselves as objects, along with other objects, in their social environment. (b) He recognized that self emerges from communication with others. As individuals interact with each other, they interpret each other's and thereby see themselves from the point of others. In developing his brand of symbolic interactionism, Cooley began with several assumptions. His first assumption was that children are born with an instinctive capacity for self-development. Second, this capacity matured in interactions in primary groups (i.e., the family, friendship circles, etc.). Third, primary groups are characterized by intimate face to face association and cooperation. Fourth, these interactions are the "nurseries of human nature." After laying out the main assumptions, Cooley proceeded to propound his now famous looking glass-self theory. Box 6:1 - Charles Horton Cooley: 1864-1929 "There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to 'Americanize' him." – Charles Horton Cooley Charles Horton Cooley was born on August 17, 1864 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the fourth of six children. He was the son of Mary Elizabeth Horton and the renowned law school professor and State Supreme Court Justice Thomas McIntyre Cooley. Young Cooley was somewhat of a withdrawn, passive child. He felt intimidated and alienated by his successful father, a characteristic that haunted him for the rest of his life. Cooley attended the public schools of Ann Arbor and graduated high school in 1880. Cooley was greatly inspired by the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin. In his own works, Cooley sought to highlight the connection between society and the individual and felt that the two could only be understood in relationship to each other. One’s personality comes from one’s influences. He coined the concept of the “looking-glass self”, the

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social determination of the self, which later influenced George Herbert Mead’s theory of self and symbolic interactionism. Cooley ultimately wanted to show that the facts of social life are mental, and the conduct of persons, groups and institutions are the result of fundamental mental phenomena. His Major Works are: The Theory of Transportation (1894); Personal Competition (1899); In Human Nature and the Social Order (1902); Social Organization (1909); Social Process (1918); Sociological Theory and Social Research (1930),

The Looking Glass-Self The central premise of the theory is captured in Cooley’s statement: "I feel about me the way you think of me." There are three elements in the looking glass-self theory: (a) the imagination of our appearance to the other person; (b) the imagination of his/her judgment of that appearance and (c) some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification. Cooley’s Looking Glass-Self ties in with two important symbolic interactionist concepts: self-fulfilling prophecy and the definition of the situation. The term self-fulfilling prophecy was coined by Robert Merton. He defined it as a prophecy or prediction which is false but is made true by a person’s actions. For example, telling a child he/she is stupid again and again is likely to make them perceive themselves as stupid indeed, even though they might not necessarily be stupid. Labelling theorists deploy self-fulfilling prophecy to explain how a negative label attached to a person for a specific behavior, may with time, make the person to internalize that label and reinforce that behavior. This is not limited to children. Adults too are impacted by self-fulfilling prophecy, but it tends to have a greater influence on infants in how they grow up to be. The lyrics of a song in Ghana explain the mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecy well. Here is a translation of the lyrics: “You have accused me of having done this heinous thing I have told you repeatedly I did not do it You know what? Now I am going to do it …And to hell with you!” The self-fulfilling process begins with a praise or condemnation of a behavior by an individual and ends with a repetition of the said behavior. First, a label (here we mean both negative and positive label) is attached to the individual. The individual may resist the label initially by expressing self-doubt: “Do you I deserve this label?” “No, it is not me.” But if the person continues to hear the same name-calling or compliment from everyone and everywhere, she is likely to lose whatever defense mechanism she may have and then surrender, give up her protest/resistance. She might say something like “Well, let

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me be what they say I am since no one will believe that I am not they claim I am.”

Briefly The second concept, definition of the situation, was coined by American sociologists William and Dorothy Thomas. The concept is captured in their now famous declaration: “If men [sic] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”

The second concept, definition of the situation, was coined by American sociologists William and Dorothy Thomas. The concept is captured in their now-famous declaration: “If men [sic] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” According to Mann (2011, p.186), if we see a situation as real, it impacts what we do and thus has a social effect. For example, if a group of students and their professor think theirs is a hardworking class, they may act as hardworking, although they may not necessarily be a hardworking class. Definitions have the force of inertia and dynamism. In situations where the definition contradicted by or clashes with "objective" reality, it often leads real consequences for people's actions and events. The definitional process involves the determination of relevant identities and attributes of interlocutors. Thus, if, for example, a teacher defines a student as a slow learner (based on inaccurate or incomplete information), her discriminatory behavior (e.g., less attention and lower expectations) may have a negative effect on the student's intellectual development, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy. This process, in combination with interactionist ideas about self-concept formation, is the basis of the labeling theory of deviance. Labeling theory proposes that a key factor in the development of deviants is the negative label of identity imposed on the person (e.g., "criminal," "pervert") who engages in deviant behavior (Becker 1963). Defining a situation is an active and dynamic process. It involves an active ongoing negotiation that shifts and changes within the specific situation the social actor finds herself in. An initial definition, based on prior experiences or cultural expectations, may be revised in the course of interaction. Much of the negotiation in social situations entails an attempt to present the self in a favorable light or to defend a valued identity. Erving Goffman's (1959) insightful analyses of impression management and the use of deference and demeanor, as well as Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman's (1968) examination of the use of excuses, justifications, and accounts speak to the intricacies involved in situational definitions. Where power or status disparities exist, the

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dominant interactant's definition of the situation likely prevails. (Gecas & Tsushima, 2013, p.2; see http://family.jrank.org/pages/1673/Symbolic-Inter actionism-Importance-Meanings.html ) Box 6:2 - The Looking Glass-Self, Self-fulfilling Prophecy and the Definition of the Situation The central premise of the theory of the looking glass-self is captured in Cooley’s statement: “I feel about me the way you think of me” (Cooley, 1902, p. 180). There are three elements in the looking glass-self theory: a) the imagination of our appearance to the other person; b) the imagination of his/her judgment of that appearance and c) the creation of some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification (shame). Cooley’s looking glass-self ties in with two important symbolic interactionist concepts: self-fulfilling prophecy and the definition of the situation. The term selffulfilling prophecy was coined by Robert Merton. He defined it as a prophecy or prediction which is false, but is made true by a person’s actions. For example, telling a child he/she is stupid again and again is likely to make him/her perceive him/herself as stupid, even though he/she might not necessarily be stupid. Labelling theorists deploy self-fulfilling prophecy to explain how a negative label attached to a person for a specific behavior may with time, make the person to internalize that label and reinforce that behavior. Researchers have emphasized how “particular definitions of the situation held by educators result in self-fulfilling prophecies” (Wotherspoon, 1998, p. 26). For example, teachers use labels to describe parents and their students based on certain assumptions, background information, and observations that may be biased. In short, labeling students affects their career path and educational chances. Rosenthal and Jacobson showed that the labeling of students based on assumptions about their potentials for learning, regardless of their validity, have influenced students’ performance more than student’s actual abilities (Wotherspoon, 1998, p. 27). Teachers categorize students as non-negotiable, intermittently negotiable, or continuously negotiable. Based on this system of categorization, teachers employ different strategies in their interactions with students. This is not limited to children. Adults too are impacted by self-fulfilling prophecy, but it tends to have greater influence on infants in how they grow up to be. The second concept, definition of the situation, was coined by American sociologists William and Dorothy Thomas. The concept is captured in their now famous declaration: “If men [sic] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” According to Mann (2011, p.186), if we see a situation as real, it impacts what we do, and thus has a social effect. For example, if a group of students and their professor think their class is a hardworking class, they may act as hardworking, although they may not necessarily be a hardworking class. Also termed the power of the situation, the definition of the situation does have a powerful impact on our attitudes, which could make or break us and mend or destroy our relationships. It could turn people from “morons” to geniuses, and vice versa. It can empower or lead to a paralysis of will. The power of the situation ties in with another important concept in symbolic interactionism, Weber’s verstehen. The term is defined as introspective understanding or

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empathy. Weber called on sociologists to always seek to understand what a situation, action, or symbol means to people as they engage in interaction. He advised that we should “focus on the subjective meanings of people’s acts, not their objective purposes,” because the value a given symbol has for one person or group might be quite different for someone else” (Mann, 2011, p. 186) A crucifix elicits a different meaning and emotion to a devout Catholic than to a Moslem or a Jew. It is therefore important for sociologists to investigate the actor’s actions, as what counts is the way the actor defines the meaning of that symbol.

Also termed the power of the situation, the definition of the situation does have a powerful impact on our attitudes, which could make or break us, mend or destroy our relationships. It could turn people from morons to geniuses, and vice versa, it can empower and lead to a paralysis of will. The power of the situation ties in with another important concept in symbolic interactionism, Weber’s verstehen. The term is defined as introspective understanding or empathy. Weber called on sociologists to always seek to understand what a situation, action, or symbol means to people as they engage in interaction. He advised that we should “focus on the subjective meanings of people’s acts, not their objective purposes,” because the value a given symbol has for one person or group might be quite different for someone else.” (Mann, 2011, p. 186) A crucifix elicits a different meaning and emotion to a devout Catholic than to a Moslem or a Jew. It is therefore important for sociologists to investigate the actor’s actions, as what counts is the way the actor defines the meaning of that symbol. Chapter Summary Cooley offered two significant extensions in the analysis of self. (a) The self is the process in which individuals see themselves as objects, along with other objects, in their social environment. (b) He recognized that self emerges from communication with others. The Looking Glass-Self The central premise of the theory is captured in Cooley’s statement: "I feel about me the way you think of me." There are three elements in the looking glass-self theory: (a) the imagination of our appearance to the other person; (b) the imagination of his/her judgment of that appearance and (c) some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification.

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Cooley’s Looking Glass-Self ties in with two important symbolic interactionist concepts: self-fulfilling prophecy and the definition of the situation. Self-fulfilling prophecy refers to a prophecy or prediction which is false, but is made true by a person’s actions. Definition of the situation, was coined by American sociologists William and Dorothy Thomas. The concept is captured in their now-famous declaration: “If men [sic] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences

Chapter Seven: Erving Goffman and Impression Management Another contributor to symbolic interactionism is Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982). He was born and raised in Alberta, and attended the University of Toronto and the University of Chicago. He became a professor at Berkeley and later at Pennsylvania. Wallace and Wolf (…) note that Goffman spent considerable time describing unusual situations such as prisons and asylums, total institutions, using these to show how individuals used various means (many unauthorized) to maintain their sense of selfhood. He also using these settings to illustrate aspects of everyday life, and the unexamined assumptions that we all make in such situations. Goffman did not develop an all-encompassing theory seeking to explain all parts of the social world. Instead, he chose to engage in a sustained analysis of the interaction order – social situations or "environments in which two or more individuals are physically in one another’s presence" (Goffman Reader, p. 235). These are the situations where we spend much or most of our life – in face-to-face activities involving others, whether these be everyday social situations, situations within organized structures (jobs, school), or unusual social situations (accidents, weddings, funerals) (Gingrich, 2013). Goffman built on Mead's notion of role taking. He used theatre and drama as a metaphor for how the social actor presents herself and how she endeavors to preserve her sense of self or selfhood. He was interested in the roles the social actor performs, the nature and the different aspects of these roles, how the social actor interprets these roles, and how she distances herself from the roles. In his works, he examined the basis and logic of human interaction, concluding that it is the human linkages and countless minor syntheses that constitute what he termed the interaction order (micro processes revolving around face-to-face behavior and interaction among individuals). (Gingrich, 2013) His approach is called dramaturgy or dramaturgical sociology because he constructed his theory from the logic of the famous Shakespearean declaration "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players." The Shakespearean line is from his play, As You Like It. The main assumption of Goffman’s theory is that we are all actors and actresses, who try to

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manage other people’s impressions of us. Our behavior in the public setting is akin to a performance on the stage. We perform according to a script, i.e., social norms. According to Goffman, for any social intercourse to be successful, actors must empathize with their fellow participants in order to create joint social acts. They also must actively manage to control how others will interpret their behavior. In his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Goffman outlined two ways individuals manage impressions: front stage or region behavior and back-stage behavior. Using the front and back-stages or regions in a theatrical setting as an analogy explained how the social life is a performance and individuals as actors and actresses. Using a restaurant environment to illustrate his theory, he posited that the front stage or region behavior is the formal, expected behavior we put on in social or public settings. In the restaurant, people’s behavior or performance is characterized by cooperation, toothpaste smiles, and politeness, courtesy, and decorum. The attendant is acting a role; manipulating his customers, impressing them. However, to know the true character of the waiter, we must observe his behavior in the kitchen, where the real character of the waiter is revealed. In the kitchen, he may argue with the chef or other waiters. The waiter’s behavior in the kitchen is what Goffman called back-stage behavior or out-of-role behavior. Back-stage behavior is informal, and it takes place in more or less private settings. By looking at both front-stage and back-stage behaviors, we are able to have a more rounded picture of a person than the image presented to customers, or audience members (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). More specifically, Goffman used the front region of daily life to mean the way social actors attempt to manage the individual’s impressions. He explained that much of what people do in face-to-face encounters is nothing more than impression management, aimed at “ensuring that the image projected to their interlocutors in an encounter is consistent with the role or impression that the individual wishes to convey.” (Gingrich, 2013, p.16) Gingrich (Gingrich, 2013, p. 16) explained that “this may involve props or aspects of presentation such as clothing, gestures, speech and what might be termed attitudes or behavior such as deference, Goffman demonstrated the multiple ways in which the individual works to manage impressions and accomplish a successful presentation of the self to others. According to Gingrich, (2013, p.15), “much of this work is hidden, and one of the tasks of the sociologist is to observe social situations in order to make more visible some of the unexamined aspects of encounters.” For Goffman, all the ordinary situations in which interacting individuals find themselves involve a lot of work on the part of the individual. (Gingrich, 2013)

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One such situation is the Interaction Order. Goffman used the term to capture the acts of individuals or small groups. The interaction order or micro processes revolve around face-to-face behavior and interaction among individuals. As Turner explains, Goffman held that people spend much of their waking life moving about in space, making fleeting and engrossing contact with others, going to meetings, attending performances ... and celebrating occasions.” These kinds of activities have not been given sufficient attention in sociological theory, despite the fact that they constitute such a large proportion of human daily experience. (Turner:: 447). Goffman creates a complex theory of social interaction, coupling dynamic processes of interaction, which creates the micro or interaction order and a stable, existing macro order. Goffman posits that the structures in the macro order provide the settings within which interaction takes place. The interaction order, he explains, is distinct from macrostructural order, but there exists a link between the two, a loose one, however. The interactional order and the macrostructural order exist as autonomous and dialectical relationships. Explaining the dialectical relationship between the two, Goffman avers that there can be a considerable degree of autonomy of individuals in the interaction order, and these interactions cannot just be seen as the working out or effect of forces that come from the macro order. (Turner, p. 448) While there is a loose connection of interaction and structures, the connection is not straightforward one-to-one one. According to Goffman, individuals deliberately and inadvertently give off signs that provide others with information about how to respond. Out of such a mutual use of sign vehicles individuals develop a definition of the situation. A definition of the situation is a plan of cooperative activity, but which at the same time is not so much a real agreement as to what exists, but rather a real agreement as to what whose claims concerning what issues will be temporarily honored (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). In constructing this definition of a situation, individuals engage in performances in which each orchestrates gestures to present oneself in a particular manner. We try to portray ourselves as having certain characteristics and deserve some special treatment. These performances revolve around several interrelated dynamics: First, the creation of a front. A front includes physical setting, decor, furniture, etc., and stage props to create a certain impression. A front stage also involves items of expressive equipment—emotions, energy, and other capacities of expression; (a) appearance or those signs that tell others of an individual’s social position and status; (b) manner or those signs that inform others about the role that an individual expects to play.

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Second, in addition to presenting a front, individuals use gestures in what Goffman termed Dramatic realization or the infusion into activity of signs that highlight a commitment to a given definition of the situation. The more a situation creates problems in presenting a front, the greater will be efforts at dramatic realization. Third, performances also involve Idealization or efforts to present oneself in ways that incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of society (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). When individuals are mobile, moving into a new setting, idealization becomes pronounced. Idealization creates problems for an individual, however, because if she is to be effective, individuals must suppress, conceal and underplay those elements that might contradict more general values. Fourth, such efforts at concealment are part of a general process of maintaining expressive control. Because minor cues and signs are read by others and contribute to the definition of a situation, actors must regulate their muscular ability, their signs of involvement, their orchestration of front, and their ability to be fit for interaction (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). According to Wallace and Wolf (2006), a discrepancy between behavior and the definition of a situation can unsettle the interaction. The impression of reality fostered by a performance is delicate, fragile, and can be shattered by minor mishaps. Fifth, individuals can also engage in misrepresentation. The eagerness of one's audience to read gestures and determine one's front makes that audience vulnerable to manipulation and duping. Sixth, individuals often engage in mystification or the maintenance of distance from others as a way to keep them in awe and in conformity to a definition of a situation. Wallace and Wolf (2006) noted such mystification is, however, limited primarily to those of higher rank and status. Seventh, individuals seek to make their performances seem real and to avoid communicating a sense of contrivance. Thus individuals must communicate, or at least appear to others, as sincere, natural and spontaneous. These procedures for bringing off a successful performance and thereby creating an overall definition of a situation constitute the core of Goffmanian sociology (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). Chapter Summary •

Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982) was born and raised in Alberta, and attended the University of Toronto and the University of Chicago.

•

Goffman spent considerable time describing unusual situations such as prisons and asylums, total institutions, using these to show how

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individuals used various means (many unauthorized) to maintain their sense of selfhood. •

Goffman built on Mead's notion of role taking.

•

He used theatre and drama as a metaphor for how the social actor presents herself and how she endeavors to preserve her sense of self or selfhood.

•

He was interested in the roles the social actor performs, the nature and the different aspects of these roles, how the social actor interprets these roles, and how she distances herself from the roles.

•

He examined the basis and logic of human interaction, concluding that it is the human linkages and countless minor syntheses that constitute what he termed the interaction order. His approach is called dramaturgy or dramaturgical sociology

•

He constructed his theory from the logic of the famous Shakespearean declaration "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players."

•

In his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Goffman outlined two ways individuals manage impressions: front stage or region behavior and back-stage behavior.

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A front stage also involves items of expressive equipment—emotions, energy, and other capacities of expression; (a) appearance or those signs that tell others of an individual’s social position and status; (b) manner or those signs that inform others about the role that an individual expects to play.

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Second, in addition to presenting a front, individuals use gestures in what Goffman termed Dramatic realization or the infusion into activity of signs that highlight a commitment to a given definition of situation. The more a situation creates problems in presenting a front, the greater will be efforts at dramatic realization. Third, performances also involve Idealization or efforts to present oneself in ways that incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of society

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Fifth, individuals can also engage in misrepresentation. The eagerness of one's audience to read gestures and determine one's front makes that audience vulnerable to manipulation and duping.

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Sixth, individuals often engage in mystification or the maintenance of distance from others as a way to keep them in awe and in conformity to a definition of a situation. Wallace and Wolf (2006) noted such mystification is, however, limited primarily to those of higher rank and status.

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Seventh, individuals seek to make their performances seem real and to avoid communicating a sense of contrivance. Thus individuals must communicate, or at least appear to others, as sincere, natural and spontaneous. These procedures for bringing off a successful performance and thereby creating an overall definition of a situation constitute the core of Goffmanian sociology (Wallace and Wolf, 2006).

Chapter Eight: Phenomenology Phenomenology is derived from two ancient Greek words, logos (study or logic) and phenomena (appearance). Thus, phenomenology is simply defined as the study of experience or the study of phenomena (Mann, 2011, p.207). A phenomenon denotes the appearance of an object, event, or condition in the conscious perception of an individual. Phenomenology seeks to eliminate everything that represents a prejudgment or presupposition. It invites the scholar to look at things openly, undiluted by the habits of the natural world. The overarching goal or challenge is to describe things as they are, to understand meanings and essences by deploying intuition and self-reflection. Phenomenologists reason that meaning is created when the object is as it appears in our consciousness, mingled with the object in nature. “What appears in consciousness is an absolute reality, while what appears to the world is a product of learning” Moustakas explains (p. 27). The act of consciousness and the object of consciousness are intentionally related. Intuition is therefore essential in describing whatever presents itself, and in his transcendental philosophy, Husserl preferred using intuition over deduction. According to Moustakas (1994), transcendental science emerged as a reaction to, and dissatisfaction with, science-based exclusively on studies of empirical reality or the material world. Phenomenologists such as Hurssel and Shultz contended that science failed to account for the consciously experiencing individual. Husserl, therefore, proposed a phenomenology that takes into account what can be discovered through reflection on subjective acts and their objective correlates. He called his approach transcendental phenomenology. Transcendental phenomenology derives from the following premises: • • •

• •

Perception is the primary source of knowledge The only thing that we know for certain is that which appears before us in our consciousness; To understand the objects that appear before us we must return to the self, to know and recognize ourselves in the experience that is investigated. The starting point of interrogating or understanding a phenomenon is reflection. The reflection must be done through bracketing or suspension of preconceived notions and biases.

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• • •

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Phenomenological research focuses on descriptions of experiences, not explanations or analysis. The data of experience (i.e., the researcher’s own thinking, intuiting and judging) are primary evidence of scientific investigation. Since the researcher has his or her own pre-learned or preconceived notions about the phenomenon he or she is seeking to understand, he or she must deploy bracketing Bracketing will enable the researcher to achieve a pure and absolute transcendental ego.

According to phenomenologists, reality is the way things appear to perceivers. They hypothesize that actual lived experience is the data on which knowledge is based. Phenomenology is underpinned by three principles: First, knowledge is conscious. Second, things are understood in terms of their potential in action, and third, language is the vehicle through which understanding arises (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). The founder of this paradigm is Edmund Husserl. In his work, Husserl made several assumptions about social reality. The first assumption is that we can know things by attending carefully to how they are presented to us in our consciousness. The second assumption is that the natural attitude of everyday life is insufficient for ascertaining truth because it is biased. The third assumption is that truth can be known only in a reflective attitude. Here distractions and biases are bracketed, or suspended. He suggested that to get to the essence of things, we must use what he termed phenomenological reduction. Phenomenological reduction is a process of defining the pure essence of a psychological phenomenon. “It is a process whereby empirical subjectivity is suspended, so that pure consciousness may be defined in its essential and absolute being.” (as cited in Mann, 2011, p. 207) This is accomplished by a method of "bracketing" empirical data away from consideration. Bracketing empirical data away from further investigation leaves pure consciousness, pure phenomena, and the pure ego as the residue of phenomenological reduction (Little John and Foss, 2008). Bracketing allows us to suspend or “hold off to the side” any preconceived notions of any given reality we intend to understand or study. It allows us to play the role of the stranger. The stranger must ask the natives questions if he or she is to know how things work in the native setting. As a Ghanaian saying goes, “the stranger has a perfect, 20-20 vision, yet cannot see.” The stranger does not know the nuances and intricacies of the strange or native culture and hence must rely on the natives for their insight and direction. Thus, the phenomenological approach encourages the scholar and researcher to assume that he or she does not know anything about the phenomenon he or she is about to study and ask questions (Quist-Adade, 2012).

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Phenomenological reduction is also a method of bracketing or suspending empirical intuitions away from inquiry, by refraining from making judgments upon them. Husserl uses the term epoche (Greek, for "a cessation") to refer to this suspension of judgment regarding the true nature of reality. Phenomenological reduction calls for bracketed judgment or an epoche (ancient Greek for skepticism) (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines epoche as the act of refraining from any conclusion for or against anything as the decisive step in inquiry or understanding a given phenomenon. Husserl also proposed that transcendental reduction can be used to understand pure experience itself, which is called the transcendental ego. Transcendental reduction is based on the premise that reality comprises objects and events as they are perceived (seen) or understood in our consciousness and not independent of our consciousness. Transcendental ego is based on the premise that the scholar or researcher can be totally unbiased and without presuppositions or prejudgments.

Box 8:1- Summarizing Phenomenology Phenomenology is based on the premise that reality comprises objects and events as they are perceived (seen) or understood in our consciousness and not independent of our consciousness The phenomenological tradition is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the way in which humans come to understand the world. Phenomenon refers to the appearance of an object, event or condition in one’s perception. It makes actual lived experience social actors the basic data of reality. Three basic principles inform the paradigm, namely: (a) Knowledge is conscious; (b) How one relates to a thing determines its meaning for that person. And (c) Language is the vehicle for meaning. The process of interpretation is central to most phenomenological thought. Unlike the semiotic tradition, where interpretation is separate from reality, in the phenomenological tradition interpretation forms what is real for the person. Interpretation emerges from a hermeneutic circle in which interpreters constantly go back and forth between experience and assigning meaning. Three general schools of thought make up the tradition. The first is classical phenomenology is associated with Edward Husserl the founder of modern phenomenology. This tradition is highly objective and claims the world can be experienced, through bracketing, the putting aside of bias without the knower bringing his or her own categories to bear. The second is The phenomenology of perception and posits that we can only know things through our personal, subjective relationship to these things. The third and final is Hermeneutic phenomenology, the interpretation of being (also known as the hermeneutic of Dasein), extends the subjective tradition even further by incorporating communication: Communication is the vehicle by which you assign meaning to your experience.

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Alfred Schultz’s Social phenomenology According to Alfred Schultz, people make three assumptions in their lives: (1) reality is constant, (2) their own experience is valid, and (3) they see themselves as having the power to act. He proposes that our worlds of reality depend on our communication with others. For him, knowledge is part of a historical tradition communicated in the social groups. Reality, then, is socially constructed. Groups create typifications or categories for classifying events and objects. Language is used to label categories. Knowledge constitutes social recipes of doing things within a group and situation. Categories, signs, and meanings differ from group to group and therefore there is no general or universal truth in any given situation. According to Schultz, we live in different realities in our everyday lives. In order to experience them we must bracket out other worlds. An example would be bracketing out the world to watch/enjoy a film in a movie theatre (Mann, 2011). The four realms are: the Vorwelt is the past world. This world is full of people that lived before us. The Folgewelt is the future world (Mann, 2012). This world is full of people we will never meet, thus we can only guess about this world. The Umwelt is the surrounding world. This is the world of everyday interactions filled with people sharing the same space as us. Schultz called these people consociates (Mann, 2012). Finally, the last realm is the Mitwelt. This is the shared world filled with people living at the same time as us, but not in the same space/area. Schultz further divides the Mitwelt into eight regions: (1) People we have met before and could meet again; (2) People who have been encountered by someone we know, but not by us directly; (3) Those whom we are about to meet (and who will thus enter our umwelt); (4) Strangers we know only as filling a position or role; (5) A group of people whose general identity and function we know without knowing any of them individually; (6) Collective entities that are anonymous and that by their very natural we can’t meet; (7) Objective structures of meaning we and our consociates had no hand in creating; (8) Physical artifacts our umwelt had no hand in creating (Mann, 2012). Fig. 8:1 phenomenology Berger and Luckman Hursserl Shultz Garfinkel Marleau Ponty Paul Ricoeur Levinas

The Social Construction of Reality The Life-World Intersubjective Life World Ethnomethodology Inter-Subjectivity Inter-subjectivity; interpreting text Reject subject/object dichotomy

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Chapter Summary • • • • •

• • • • •

• • • • •

• • •

Phenomenology is defined as the study of experience or the study of phenomena. It seeks to describe things as they are, to understand meanings and essences by deploying intuition and self-reflection. Phenomenologists reason that meaning is created when the object is as it appears in our consciousness, mingled with the object in nature. Hurssel and Shultz contended that science failed to account for the consciously experiencing individual. Husserl proposed a phenomenology that takes into account what can be discovered through reflection on subjective acts and their objective correlates. He called his approach transcendental phenomenology. Transcendental phenomenology derives from the following premises: Perception is the primary source of knowledge The only thing that we know for certain is that which appears before us in our consciousness; To understand the objects that appear before us we must return to the self, to know and recognize ourselves in the experience that is investigated. The starting point of interrogating or understanding a phenomenon is reflection. The reflection must be done through bracketing or suspension of preconceived notions and biases. Phenomenological research focuses on descriptions of experiences, not explanations or analysis. The data of experience (i.e., the researcher’s own thinking, intuiting and judging) are primary evidence of scientific investigation. Since the researcher has his or her own pre-learned or preconceived notions about the phenomenon he or she is seeking to understand, he or she must deploy bracketing. Bracketing will enable the researcher to achieve a pure and absolute transcendental ego. According to phenomenologists, reality is the way things appear to perceivers. They hypothesize that actual lived experience is the data on which knowledge is based. Phenomenology is underpinned by three principles: First, knowledge is conscious. Second, things are understood in terms of their potential in action, and third, language is the vehicle through which understanding arises (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). The founder of this paradigm is Edmund Husserl.

Chapter Nine: Ethnomethodology Ethnomethodology, an offshoot of symbolic interactionism, raises the question of how people who are interacting with each other can create the illusion of a shared social order even when they don't understand each other fully and in fact have different points of view. For Gingrich (2013) ethnomethodologists focus more on human actions, while symbolic interactionism focusses more on the meaning and interpretation leading to the act. Littlejohn (2009) defines ethnomethodology as the careful observation of microbehaviors in real situations. Ethnomethodology, the detailed study of how people organize their everyday lives, is important in conversational analysis (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). West and Fenstermaker, (1993, p. 152) have noted that ethnomethodology “proposes that the properties of social life which seem objective, factual and trans-situational are actually managed accomplishments or achievements of local processes. ... The aim of ethnomethodological inquiry is to analyze the situated conduct of societal members in order to see how "objective" properties of social life are achieved.” “Ethnomethodological studies analyze everyday activities as members methods for making those same activities visibly-rational-and-reportable-forall-practical-purposes, i.e., ‘accountable’, as organizations of commonplace everyday activities” (1967, p.vii). It interrogates the everyday, common-sense understandings that people have of the world. Its etymology can be traced to the Greek word “Ethno,” which means people or folk. Thus, ethnomethodology simply defined is “people's method of making sense of their social world.” (Mann, 2011, p.214) It investigates how people make sense of everyday activities. Ethnomethodologists treat the taken-for-granted as problematic and have carried a number of investigations into how people come to take their everyday lived experiences for granted. Ethnomethodologists have used different methods in seeking to understand how people make sense of their everyday activities. We provide a brief synopsis of conversational analysis here. (a) Conversational analysis (CA) sees conversation as a social achievement, the way things get done cooperatively through talk; (b) Conversational analysis focuses on interaction in discourse; (c) The primary concern of conversation analysis is the sequential organization of talk; (d) Conversation analysis assumes that

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talk, like all social activity, is patterned; (e) Conversation analysis looks at details of conversations to discover the ways in which organization is achieved. Doing ethnomethodology Ethnomethodologists use the following methods in their research: openended interviews, in which the respondent is allowed to answer as he or she pleases to free choice questions from the researcher. For example, the researcher/interviewer may ask a question such as “How do feel about the recent terrorist attack in Boston? The others are in-depth interview, participant observation, videotaping, documentary, and, breaching experiments. The most mentioned of these methods is called the breaching experiment. Harold Garfinkel is the forerunner in these methods. In one of such interrogations, he demonstrated the logic behind the taken-for-granted by sending his students out to perform "experiments in trust" or breaching experiments. The students were instructed to bring ordinary conversations to an abrupt halt by refusing to take for granted that they knew what the other person was saying, and so demand explanations and then explanations of the explanations (Garfinkel, 1967). In another breaching experiment, a researcher asked his students to act as strangers in their own homes by asking permission to perform normal acts, such as getting food from the fridge, using the bathrooms, watch television. In these experiments, people tended to get frustrated and even angry when their taken-for-granted assumptions were challenged. More recently, ethnomethodologist researchers have performed minutely detailed analyses of ordinary conversations in order to reveal the methods by which turn-taking and other conversational maneuvers are managed. Ethnomethodologists deliberately ask questions whose answers are obvious, questions that may seem stupid to most people. The trick is to tease out non-obvious answers; to interrogate how people make sense of their lived experiences and interactions. For example, you arrive late to class and your instructor asks you the reason for your lateness. You reply by saying you had a flat tire on your way. Then your instructor asks: “What’s a flat tire?” You are likely to stare at your instructor askance, thinking “What a stupid question? Who doesn’t know what a flat tire is?” This is the stock-in-trade of ethnomethodologists. Their goal is to disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions in order to how we make sense of our everyday lives An examination of the colloquy reveals the following. (a) There were many matters that the partners understood they were talking about that they did not mention. (b) Many matters that the partners understood were understood on the basis not only of what was actually said but what was left unspoken. Many matters were understood through a process of attending to the tem-

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poral series of utterances as documentary evidence of a developing conversation rather than as a string of terms. (d) Matters that the two understood in common were understood only in and through a course of understanding work that consisted of treating an actual linguistic event as "the document of," as "pointing to," as standing on behalf of an underlying pattern of matters that each already supposed to be the matters that the person, by his speaking, could be telling the other about. The underlying pattern was not only derived from a course of individual documentary evidence but the documentary evidence in their turn were interpreted on the basis of "what was known" and anticipatorily knowable about the underlying patterns. [4] Each was used to elaborate the other. (e) In attending to the utterances as events-in-theconversation each party made references to the biography and prospects of the present interaction which each used and attributed to the other as a common scheme of interpretation and expression. (f ) Each waited for something more to be said in order to hear what had previously been talked about and each seemed willing to wait. Common understandings would consist of a measured amount of shared agreement if the common understandings consisted of events coordinated with the successive positions of the hands of the clock. i.e., of events in standard time. The foregoing results, because they deal with the exchanges of the colloquy as events-in-a-conversation, urge that one more time parameter, at least, is required: the role of time as it is constitutive of "the matter talked about" as a developing and developed event over the course of action that produced it, as both the process and product were known from within this development by both parties, each for himself as well as on behalf of the other. The colloquy reveals additional features. (1) Many of its expressions are such that their sense cannot be decided by an auditor unless he knows or assumes something about the biography and the purposes of the speaker, the circumstances of the utterance the previous course of the conversation, or the particular relationship of actual or potential interaction that exists between user and auditor. The expressions do not have a sense that remains identical through the changing occasions of their use. (2) The events that were talked about were specifically vague. Not only do they not frame a clearly restricted set of possible determinations but the depicted events include as their essentially intended and sanctioned features an accompanying "fringe" of determinations that are open with respect to internal relationships, relationships to other events, and relationships to retrospective and prospective possibilities. (3) For the sensible character of an expression, upon its occurrence each of the conversationalists as auditor of his own as well as the other's productions had to assume as of any present accomplished point in the exchange that by

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waiting for what he or the other person might have said at a later time the present significance of what had already been said would have been clarified. Thus many expressions had the property of being progressively realized and realizable through the further course of the conversation. (4) It hardly needs to be pointed out that the sense of the expressions depended upon where the expression occurred in serial order, the expressive character of the terms that comprised it, and the importance to the conversationalists of the events depicted. These properties of common understandings stand in contrast to the features they would have if we disregarded their temporally constituted character and treated them instead as precoded entries on a memory drum, to be consulted as a definite set of alternative meanings from among which one was to select, under predecided conditions that specified in which of some set of alternative ways one was to understand the situation upon the occasion that the necessity for a decision arose. The latter properties are those of strict rational discourse as these are idealized in the rules that define an adequate logical proof. For the purposes of conducting their everyday affairs persons refuse to permit each other to understand "what they are really talking about" in this way. The anticipation that persons will understand, the occasionality of expressions, the specific vagueness of references, the retrospective-prospective sense of a present occurrence, waiting for something later in order to see what was meant before, are sanctioned properties of common discourse. They furnish a background of seen but unnoticed features of common discourse whereby actual utterances are recognized as events of common, reasonable, understandable, plain talk. Persons require these properties of discourse as conditions under which they are themselves entitled and entitle others to claim that they know what they are talking about and that what they are saying is understandable and ought to be understood. In short, their seen but unnoticed presence is used to entitle persons to conduct their common conversational affairs without interference. Departures from such usages call forth immediate attempts to restore a right state of affairs. The sanctioned character of these properties is demonstrable as follows. Students were instructed to engage an acquaintance or a friend in an ordinary conversation and, without indicating that what the experimenter was asking was in any way unusual, to insist that the person clarify the sense of his commonplace remarks. Twenty-three students reported twenty-five instances of such encounters. The following are typical excerpts from their accounts.

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Chapter summary • • •

•

•

•

• • •

•

Ethnomethodology is the careful observation of microbehaviors in real situations. Ethnomethodologists focus more on human actions Ethnomethodology, the detailed study of how people organize their everyday lives, is important in conversational analysis Ethnomethodology “proposes that the properties of social life which seem objective, factual and trans-situational are actually managed accomplishments or achievements of local processes. ... The aim of ethnomethodological inquiry is to analyze the situated conduct of societal members in order to see how "objective" properties of social life are achieved.” “Ethnomethodological studies analyze everyday activities as members methods for making those same activities visibly-rational-andreportable-for-all-practical-purposes, i.e., ‘accountable’, as organizations of commonplace everyday activities” (1967, p.vii). It interrogates the everyday, common-sense understandings that people have of the world. Its etymology can be traced to the Greek word “Ethno,” which means people or folk. Ethnomethodology simply defined is “people's method of making sense of their social world.” It investigates how people make sense of everyday activities. Ethnomethodologists treat the taken-for-granted as problematic and have carried a number of investigations into how people come to take their everyday lived experiences for granted. Ethnomethodologists have used different methods in seeking to understand how people make sense of their everyday activities. We provide a brief synopsis of conversational analysis here. o Conversational analysis (CA) sees conversation as a social achievement, the way things get done cooperatively through talk; o Conversational analysis focuses on interaction in discourse; o The primary concern of conversation analysis is the sequential organization of talk; o Conversation analysis assumes that talk, like all social activity, is patterned; o Conversation analysis looks at details of conversations to discover the ways in which organization is achieved.

Chapter Ten: Rational Choice Theory It is pertinent to begin our discussion of the rational choice theory (RCT) with a brief explanation of the theory of utilitarianism, as the former takes its roots from the latter. Utilitarianism proposes people act to maximize their pleasure and to reduce their pain. It takes its roots from the works of such 18th-century thinkers as the Italian economist Cesare Beccaria (1738“1794) and the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748“1832). Briefly, both men reasoned that people act rationally and decide before they act whether their behavior will cause them more pleasure or pain. They applied their theory to criminal behavior, arguing that the criminal justice system in Europe at the time was far harsher than it needed to be to deter criminal behavior. Among the utilitarian thinkers of the 18th-century was Adam Smith. Adam Smith’s classic book The Wealth of Nations (1776/1910) is the Holy Grail of economics. It laid the foundation of modern economic theory (Barkan, 2015). Known as Utilitarian Economics, it was based on the assumption that economic actors are "rational and as seeking to maximize their utilities or benefits" (Turner and Powers, 2002: 303). Adopting an individualist and a minimalist (keeping things very simple; advocating moderate policies) orientations, utilitarian economics begins with the individual actor and few simple assumptions about the individual and the relationship among individuals, and from these builds models of social action and interaction that describe and explain the complexities of larger groups, systems, and whole societies. The individual actor, it is assumed, has certain preferences and faces constraints. Presented with various options, the individual economic actor decides how best to achieve the preferences, given the set of constraints and choices available. For example, sellers and buyers of goods and services act rationally to reduce their costs and in this and other ways to maximize their profits. In sociology, utilitarianism is used synonymously with exchange theory and rational choice theory (Coleman, 1990; Homans, 1961). Exchange Theory/Theories of Rational Choice Rational Choice Theory draws inspiration from economics and sees individuals as rational maximizers of their preferences. It holds to a position of “methodological individualism”, which proposes that social institutions arise as the

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result of the action and interaction of individuals. It revolves around the idea of “Homo economicus—economic man—who is driven by self-interested economic calculation rather than a value system of loyalty and honor. Rational choice theories provide the central explanatory principle of much neoclassical economic theory and have generated a vast academic literature.” (Hooker, 2011, p. 1). Known variously as Minimax theory and social exchange perspective, the RCT has been subject much scrutiny and earned both plaudit and condemnation. It is praised for its innovation and condemned for its tendency to cast the individual in the mold of a mean, calculating and even narcissistic persona. More on the merits and demerits of the theory later. Rational choice and rational action are central to exchange theory. It falls within positivist metatheory. It is undergirded by two main premises, namely (1) Human beings will form and sustain relationships if they believe that the rewards they derive from such relationships will exceed costs. (2) People are rational and base their actions on what they perceive to be the most effective means to their goals. RCT traces its historical roots to utilitarianism, which posits that it is human nature for people to want to avoid pain and maximize pleasure. Utilitarianism gained popularity during the industrial revolution. The new capitalist class, very much against life-style of the nobility and landed gentry insisted that social rewards should be allocated on the basis of talent and energy rather than birth or inherited social identity. They argued that a person's worth should be the usefulness of that person for satisfying social needs. RCT is associated with Adam Smith's laissez-faire economics, which is based on the premise that "there is a price for everything and everything has a price." Rational choice theorists make several assumptions about social reality: • • • •

First, they assert that the basic unit of social life in the individual. Second, they maintain that the unit of analysis is the individual actor. Third, they point out that the individual actor is a utility maximizer, and Fourth, they posit that social order is possible because individuals find that by pursuing their own interest, the interest of all is maximized.

The intellectual roots of the RCT are traced to the works of George Simmel, Peter Blau, Bronislav Malinkowski, and George Homans. However, Kosslyn and Rossenberg (2011) contend that the theory is somewhat less individualistic or egocentric than it appears or as some have made it seem. They paint a more complex picture of the social exchange theory by

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contending that individuals may value that which benefits particular others or the community as a whole and not just themselves. Exchange theory begins with a key social fact: People have to obtain much of what they want or need from others. Not only material things, such as food or shelter, but also such social goods, such as status or approval can be obtained only if the individual interacts with others. The resources and skills people need often lie in the hands of others who must be induced to give them up. People are, in other words, interdependent, and the nature, extent, and consequences of this interdependence are the focus of exchange theory. (Kosslyn and Rossenberg, 2011:12) Kosslyn and Rossenberg (2011) further say that there exists a common set of ideas about the nature of human conduct and the relationships that build up among people as they exchange benefits. Here are three core assumptions of the exchange theory: (a) Relations develop among people within “structures of mutual dependence.” (b) People act in ways that tend to increase outcomes they value or desire and to decrease outcomes they dislike. (c) Over time, social relationships develop and are sustained as people develop mutually beneficial exchanges. “Taken as a whole, these core assumptions portray a social world of interdependence based on the exchange of those things that people need or want. Exchange theory argues that interdependence is structured socially. Exchange relationships develop when social arrangements dictate that actors must secure the things they value from one another. “ (Kosslyn and Rossenberg 2011:.13) Kosslyn and Rossenberg (2011) have observed that exchange theory is based partly on the precepts of learning theory. “... [O]ver time, action and reward become linked, even if the individual is not consciously aware of the connection. The more an action is rewarded, the more it tends to be repeated. Kosslyn and Rossenberg (2011) further assert that Exchange theorists, however, are generally willing to consider what behavioral psychologists are not— namely, that people may consciously and rationally calculate what will get them the things they value, adding that, a child may not consciously construct actions that earn parental disapproval and thus confirm a negative view of self. However, the student who always agrees with the professor’s opinions may do so in a calculated effort to earn the professor’s favor and thus improve the chances of a good grade. Likewise, a person may turn to the same people for help with his or her problems without being conscious of doing so. But he

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or she may also calculate rationally that some people will give help, whereas others will deny it.” (14) Kosslyn and Rossenberg (2011) note further that the first two key precepts of exchange theory—socially structured interdependence and the tendency to repeat successful actions—imply a third basic idea: Over time, social relationships between specific partners will tend to stabilize. As people find dependable sources of the things they value, they will tend to return to these sources over and over again. “If two people meet and begin to provide each other with companionship, approval, and aid, their relationship as friends will gradually stabilize. Each will find the other a reliable source of those valued goods; the behavior of each will, in effect, reward the behavior of the other.” (14) Rational Choice and Individual Behaviour: Homans's Elementary Forms of Social Behaviour The concept of rationality is understood differently in the colloquial or everyday parlance than it is employed in rational choice theory. Colloquially, "rational" behavior typically means "sensible", "predictable", or "in a thoughtful, clear-headed manner." Rational choice theory uses a narrower definition of rationality. At its most basic level, the behavior is rational if it is goal-oriented, reflective (evaluative), and consistent (across time and different choice situations). This contrasts with behavior that is random, impulsive, conditioned, or adopted by unevaluative or mindless imitation. George Homan based his analyses of individual behavior on Georg Simmel's work, as well as behavioral psychology. Starting from the main assumption of the RCT that, "all contacts among men rest on the schema of giving and retaining equivalents, Homans contend that individual behavior stems from the impact of reward-punishment conditioning. Homans’ version of the RCT falls under five propositions: (1)The success proposition: The more often a particular action of a person is rewarded, the more likely the person is to perform that action. (2)The stimulus proposition: A past rewarding and similar occurrence may lead the person repeating the occurrence now. (3)The aggression-approval proposition: When a person's action does not receive the reward expected, or receives punishment he did not expect, he will be angry; he becomes more likely to perform aggressive behavior. When a person's action receives the award he expected, especially a greater reward than expected, or does not receive punishment he expected, he will be pleased; he becomes more likely to perform approving behavior, and the results of such behavior become more valuable to him.

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(4)The value proposition: The more valuable to a person is the result of his action, the more likely he is to perform the action. (5) The deprivation-satiation proposition: The more often in the recent past a person received a particular reward, the less valuable any further unit of that reward becomes for him. This is akin to the marginal utility theory—the more the value of a good decreases the more we have of it relative to other goods.) The rationality principle combines propositions 1 through 3: In choosing between alternative actions, a person will choose that one for which, as perceived by him at the time, the value (V) of the result multiplied by the probability (P) of getting the result, is the greater. The rationality principle insists that individual wants are central to a person’s behavior. People, it is assumed, are profit maximizers and loss minimizers. This is called psychological individualism. Before we proceed further, let’s take a quick look at the meaning of the concept rational choice. The Meaning of Rational Choice Rational choice theorists maintain that human beings are rational, decisionmaking people, seeking to maximize their rewards and minimize their costs. They claim that people generally exhibit the following tendencies: (a)People are goal-seeking; (b) They prefer some goals over others; (c) Individuals are capable of anticipating outcomes of their actions (d) They direct their actions toward preferred anticipated outcomes; (e) At all times human behavior rests on some previous choice. Selecting Action Alternatives Initiating the Selection Process Actors begin to consider changing a course of action when they judge that greater utility can be obtained through enactment of an alternative. The decision to switch from action A to action B will be made if • • •

the gap between outcome and goal fulfillment in action A is narrower than the gap between outcome and goal fulfillment in action B the goal to which action A is oriented is less important than the goal toward which action B is oriented the outcomes of action A do not meet the actor's expectations.

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Selecting actional alternatives revolve around the following premises: • • •

Real life is not as complicated as we might suppose. In real life, people deliberately simplify their world in order to make it manageable. All theories must simplify some aspect of social reality in order make others comprehensible. People often act by taking the role of the other.

Critique The rational choice theory has its pluses and minuses. Proponents insist that many social relationships are based on exchange. There is an attractive simplicity to the idea that people do things because they find them rewarding. Opponents have, however, faulted the theory on the following grounds: Tautology: The rational choice theory is tautological, in that, for example, it contends that rewards are gratifications that have value. That’s value is the degree of reward or reinforcement. Action is rewarding-seeking activity. It glosses over the fact that people don't always weigh and assess costs and rewards in all situations. People’s actions are often dictated by social norms and ethical principles. Norms and habits may guide much action, and once these take root people may not question them but use them to pursue meaningful social action. Simplistic: It reduces complex social relations to individual behavior. It excludes social norms and ethical bases of human behavior. Theorists of rational choice argue that macro level structures and institutions can be explained from the models of individual social action. But there are problems of aggregation of individual to societal level phenomena. One problem of RCT is that some theorists argue that almost everything humans do is rational, even altruistic and self-sacrificial. By expanding to include all forms of action as rational, action that is nonrational or irrational becomes part of the model. By including every possible form of action in rational choice, it is not clear how the standards of what is rational and what is not are constructed. (Ritzer, 1996) Chapter summary • •

Rational Choice Theory draws inspiration from economics and sees individuals as rational maximizers of their preferences. It holds to a position of “methodological individualism”, which proposes that social institutions arise as the result of the action and interaction of individuals. It revolves around the idea of “Homo eco-

Rational Choice Theory

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nomicus—economic man—who is driven by self-interested economic calculation rather than a value system of loyalty and honor. Rational choice theories provide the central explanatory principle of much neoclassical economic theory and have generated a vast academic literature.” (Hooker, 2011, p. 1). Known variously as Minimax theory and social exchange perspective, the RCT. Rational choice and rational action are central to exchange theory. It falls within positivist metatheory. It is undergirded by two main premises, namely Human beings will form and sustain relationships if they believe that the rewards they derive from such relationships will exceed costs. People are rational and base their actions on what they perceive to be the most effective means to their goals. Rational Choice theorists make several assumptions about social reality: First, they assert that the basic unit of social life in the individual. Second, they maintain that the unit of analysis is the individual actor. Third, they point out that the individual actor is a utility maximizer and Fourth, they posit that social order is possible because individuals find that by pursuing their own interest, the interest of all is maximized. Kosslyn and Rossenberg (2011) further say that there exists a common set of ideas about the nature of human conduct and the relationships that build up among people as they exchange benefits. Linda Molm and Karen have described three core assumptions of exchange theory: Relations develop among people within “structures of mutual dependence.” People act in ways that tend to increase outcomes they value or desire and to decrease outcomes they dislike. Over time, social relationships develop and are sustained as people develop mutually beneficial exchanges.

Chapter Eleven: Tying the loose ends In this chapter, we will seek to tie the loose ends of the symbolic interactionist paradigm by taking a look at its strengths and validities alongside with some criticisms leveled against it and attempts to plug its loopholes. We will end with a discussion about the staying power, vitality and the interesting ways the perspective has adapted to the changing and meandering terrain of the field of sociology. Lately, scholars, including Ken Plumer have been looking at the postmodernist turn of symbolic interactionism. The box below is an excerpt from an interesting article by Ken Plumer. Box 11:1 - The contested affinity of Postmodernism and Symbolic Interactionism? Ken Plummer Sociological theory, in general, has given a critical reception to postmodern inquiry. It seems both unwilling to recognise either postmodern social theory or even the arrival of a postmodern social order (Huber, 1995). In the face of a flurry of intellectual activity in other quarters, most (older) sociologists have clung to the traditions of their training and past. Yet of all the traditional sociological theories, symbolic interactionism must be seen as the one which has the closest links to postmodern social theory. Many of the features of the theory anticipate postmodern thought: the concern with signs and symbols, the immanent deconstructive turn through the manifest focus on “social construction,” the self-reflexive turn in fieldwork and writing strategies, the longstanding interest in culture and media, the formulation of theories of social identity - all of these are harbingers of postmodern social thought. Indeed, for several commentators, the linkage between symbolic interactionism and postmodern thought has been a persistent focus of symbolic interactionist writing since the mid 1980s. All recent volumes of Studies in Symbolic Interaction (the annual yearbook) have been devoted to postmodernism (see especially the volumes after Volume 10). The analyses of ethnography, life history, film, bodies, and culture more generally have become prominent alongside a postmodern turn which highlights rhetorics, writing technologies, social texts, cyberpunk, resisting narratives, and the like. A distinctly newish flavor appears in this latest generation of writings. Even the classic texts of interactionism become scrutinized - deconstructed under this new critical eye eg Street Corner Society (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 1992). In an interesting essay, the pragmatic social theorist Dmitri Shalin has coherently argued that ‘The issues … symbolic interactionism has highlighted since its incep-

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tion and that assured its maverick status in American sociology bear some uncanny resemblance to the themes championed by postmodernist thinkers’ (Shalin, 1993: p303) . He then cites how both reject subject-object dualism and positivismscientism, whilst championing ‘the marginal, local, everyday, heterogeneous and indeterminate’ alongside the ‘socially constructed, emergent and plural’ (p304). Slightly more extremely (and much less sympathetically), David Maines has argued that ‘symbolic interactionism, by virtue of its interpretive center, finds an easy affinity with much of postmodernism, but, because of that same center, has no need for it’. He finds valuable the resurgence of interest in interpretive work, the importance now given to writing ‘as intrinsic to method’, the concern over multiple forms of presentation, and the reclaiming of value positions and ‘critical work’ (Maines, 1996: 325). But he is unhappy with the wider and wilder positions of the postmodern project – when they start simply highlighting the new, or claiming to disbandon all claims to truth. Yet whilst some see an affinity which should not be pushed too far, others – especially younger scholars- have taken on a full and passionate commitment to the postmodern. Championing this more extreme edge has been Norman K Denzin. Denzin has been writing on the symbolic interactionist tradition for well over thirty years and his contemporary influence has been profound. But since the late 1980’s – in numerous books and article – he has taken a ‘postmodern turn’. He thus now appears in a rather odd, even contradictory role, as ‘an early Denzin’ who is a clear symbolic interactionist, and ‘a later Denzin’, who becomes much more radical and critical. His work pushes interactionists to take more seriously the wider claims being made from cultural studies, post-colonial theory, feminism, anti-racist theory, queer theory. He continues to maintain ‘an avowed humanistic commitment to study the social world from the perspective of the interacting individual (Denzin, 1997: xv) but he now wishes this to be a moral and political project too – one which connects ‘moral ethnography’ to a feminist communitarian ethic. Quite how Denzin reconciles this politics with his postmodern turn is not altogether clear; but it does seem central to his claims. Many interactionists take issue with the Denzin line, often objecting both to the ways in which it says little that is new to the interactionists, but also concerned with the very grandness of the design and writing of such postmodernists. There is, as Shalins ironically says, ‘nothing petite or humble about (it)… it is as grand in its design, sweeping in its conclusions, and intolerant to its opponents as a narrative could be’ (Shalins, 1993: 313). Indeed, in many of the pomo insights they go ‘over the top’: so much so, that if their arguments are played back immediately on themselves, much of their writing becomes instantly discredited. Their stories often proffer grander narratives than any interactionist would feel comfortable with! And some would suggest that postmodernists can go so far as to ‘fatalistic, absurd and nihilistic in the extreme’ (Prus, 1996: 218). In sum, some commentators think that the postmodern turn may be being pushed too far. Yet whatever view is taken, there is no doubt that this debate has served in many ways to galvanize interactionist theory; and nowhere perhaps is this clearer than in the debates on method. Source: http://kenplummer.com/publications/selected-writings-2/symbolicinteractionism-in-the-twentieth-century/

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Let’s begin this chapter, with a brief recapitulation of the paradigm. Classical symbolic interactionism has six premises. (1) People make decisions and act in accordance with their subjective understandings of the situation which they are in. (2) Social life consists of interactive processes rather immutable structures. (3) People understand their experiences through the meanings found in symbols, or language, used in their primary group. (4) The world is made up of social objects that have socially determined meanings. (5) People’s actions are based on their interpretations of what is going on. (6) One’s self is defined through social interaction with others. The basic ideas of symbolic interactionism were worked out, primarily by George Herbert Mead through his lectures at the Chicago School and developed by Herbert Blumer. Mead's theory is organized around the central concept of the social act, a basic unit of conduct involving the three-part relationship between gesture, response, and result. Societal action is just an extension of the social act in what Blumer calls joint action of people who have an interlinkage among them. The social act consists of five interrelated parts. (1) Society is group life, or a cluster of cooperative behaviors in a group. (2) Cooperation involves acting with intent using symbols. (3) Persons must assign meaning to the symbols used by others in order for cooperation to occur. (4) Responses to the actions of others depend upon the meanings assigned to the symbols involved in the action. (5) Meaning arises in the give-and-take of interaction in social groups. Society, Self and Mind Society is made possible through significant symbols, those symbols with shared meaning within a group. Because they have a common meaning, significant symbols allow us to imagine accurately how others will respond. The second part of the social act is the self. (1) The self is treated as an object in the sense that one can act toward the self as an object.

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(2) The self has meaning, worked out interactionally with the significant others, the most important and influential other people in one's life. (3)Through role taking, one comes to see the self as others see it. (4)The generalized other is a kind of composite perspective of how you perceive others view you. (5) The self has two parts. (a)The "me' is the generalized other, the socially acceptable and adaptive behavior, the commo n way in which others see the self. (b) The "I" is the impulsive, creative, and unpredictable aspect of the self. (c) The third element is mind, which is thinking about things in the abstract with the use of symbols. (1) The mind is not a thing but a process, a process by which objects are considered in terms of their meanings. (2) Mind is essentially an internal conversation. (3) Minding involves hesitating as you interpret the situation. Critique of Symbolic Interactionism: The Good, the Not So Good and the In-between Like any paradigm or theory, symbolic interactionism has its supporters and detractors. For advocates of symbolic interactionism, it restores hope in human creativity and agency. By investing free will or agency in individuals, it strikes out the zombie and puppet-like caricature the macroscopic and structuralist paradigms cast of individuals. As we noted earlier, the structuralfunctionalist and conflict paradigms divest individuals of any free will, but instead present them as passive and powerless. The macroscopic paradigms— the conflict and functionalist—depict individuals as pawns, who are controlled and manipulated by powerful social institutions and external forces. Symbolic interactionism creates an antithetical picture by insisting that human beings have, and often do, exercise agency. The detractors of symbolic interactionism, however, have criticized it for investing too much power in individuals, casting them as omnipotent, nearly unaffected by social institutions and social norms. It has also been criticized for being too vague on the conceptual front and for downplaying large-scale social structures. Given its micro-level focus, some have argued that symbolic interactionism is not microscopic enough, because it tends to ignore psychological factors. Another criticism of symbolic interactionism is that it tends to promote the status quo by its lack of focus on social inequalities and negative institutional and structural impacts on minorities and vulnerable groups in society. Gingrich (2015) has observed that “Sociology has been overly structural in its approach, with the individual being given too few choices and too little

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autonomy. Just as microeconomics overemphasizes the degree of individual choice, so macro level sociology limits it too much. While the interactionist approach does not provide an overall method for sociological analysis, it would seem useful to attempt to incorporate more aspects of it into an overall theoretical approach to individuals and society.” (7) Symbolic interactionists are currently trying to answer some of these criticisms by integrating micro- and macro-level theories and synthesizing their approach across other fields of study. For example, some scholars are redefining Mead's theory to show that it accounts for both micro- and macro-level phenomena. Others are using role theory as a way to integrate structure and meaning. Some symbolic interactionists are focusing more attention on culture and are working within cultural studies to examine the role communication technologies play in producing and representing social reality. Some critics also fault symbolic interactionists for being overly impressionistic in their research methods and somewhat unsystematic in their theories. Gingrich (2015) provides the following specific weaknesses in the symbolic interactionism paradigm. These weaknesses are to be found in its lack of emphasis or neglect of larger social structure, the extent of structural constraints and methodology. Here are summaries of these weaknesses identified by Gingrich. Neglect of Larger Structures Most symbolic interactionism approaches examine the very micro level, conversation, interaction of two or three people, or small groups. While the description of interaction, and the manner in which meanings are interpreted and choices made can be shown in this setting, this approach may be difficult to move beyond this setting. Larger structures do exist, as shown by legal or educational structures and bureaucracies. We do exist within these, and exactly how these are built and maintained is more or less ignored by this approach. Extent of Structural Constraints Each of the approaches recognizes structural constraints, but differ concerning the strength of these constraints. For Durkheim, Parsons and perhaps Marx, the structural constraints are very strong, and leave little room for flexibility. An extreme symbolic interaction view might be that since society is composed of the actions of the individuals in it, the society might be almost anything the people in it wish it to be. But there are obviously constraints to this, and the symbolic interactionism view may ultimately lead back to a conception of society as formed or fairly regular patterns of action and interaction, that is, structures.

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Methods There are few guidelines concerning how to examine social action and interaction, and how to consider meanings in research work. “The interactionist approach is very critical of much of conventional sociological analysis, especially quantitative sociology, but lays out few guidelines concerning what to examine.” Gingrich, 2015: 8) Attempts to address the “structural deficiencies” in the symbolic interactionism paradigm are to be found in Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman’s theory of the duality of structure and agency theory and Anthony Giddens’ saturation theory. We briefly analyze both here. Theory of the Duality of Structure and Agency Berger and Luckman’s theory of the duality of structure and agency, the central thesis of their book, The Social Construction of Reality (1986) is one among many theories that seek to bridge the gap between structure and agency. The central premise of this theory is that while individuals act on things, their actions take place within the context of social structures. There are two parts to the structure-agency nexus, which reflect the crude/simplistic and mechanical structure versus agency/determinism versus free will formulations. The structure part divests individuals of any power and casts them as mere puppets, bereft of any free will or agency. The social actor is conceptualized as nothing more than a marionette that is manipulated by powerful social institutions. It takes a fatalistic view of human beings, seeing them as victims of circumstances. Thus, human failings are blamed on social institutions, giving some people the excuse to invoke the saying ‘the devil made me do it.’ At the same time, the structure approach acknowledges the limits of human power. While the structure approach may invest significant power in social institutions, it is important to assess that sometimes it is not the lack of trying or inaction that is the cause of failure or lack of progress (Quist-Adade, 2012). It is more often than not a “conspiracy” of factors, including individual agency or lack thereof, chance, luck, the actions or inactions of other social actors (such as acts emanating from sheer envy, revenge), and the ballast of historical and evolving contemporaneous forces (e.g., a war, economic recession, changes in government policies).

The central premise of this theory is that while individuals act on things, their actions take place within the context of social structures

The agency part of the theory invests individuals with the power of agency, positing that people are not puppets, that they are free-wheeling social actors

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with a power to exercise their innate, God-given free. This position gives credence the aphorism: ‘We’re captains of the ship of our destiny.”’ This perspective holds that we are active creators of our destinies, that we do make choices for good or for bad. Some of us are better able to make choices than others. Those who make poor choices have themselves to blame. ‘The fault is in them, not in society.’ This approach is likely to engender a blame-the-victim mentality. The poor, for example, are poor ‘because of their laziness and lack of motivation, not because of society. They have no one, but themselves to blame.’ (Quist-Adade, 2012). This perspective underscores the central arguments in Lewis’ “the culture of poverty” thesis and the New Right theorist, Charles Murray’s “underclass” and “undeserving poor” theories. Briefly, being in poverty tends to create a way of living that becomes a culture of its own. This culture is learned, shared and socially transmitted as a behavior of a social group. A “Cycle of Poverty” is produced from which each generation finds difficult to escape. New Right theorists such as Charles Murray takes the work of Lewis further by stating that Britain now has an “underclass,” which has different attitudes and values to the rest of society. He posits that the underclass are the “undeserving poor” and that they have no wish to support themselves. The undeserving poor remain in poverty, he insists, because the welfare state encourages them to depend on state provision. He contends that state provision is too generous and creates “welfare dependency.” This, in turn, does not provide any incentive for the “feckless poor” to provide for themselves. (Murray, 1984) Such neo-Social Darwinist and neoliberal theorists who inspired the “slash and burn” policies of Ronald Reagan in the United States (Reaganomics) and Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom, advocate a “survival of the fittest” principle, where all members of society are “left to their devices” with no state little no intervention. Seeking to address the deficiencies in the crude free will versus determinism debate in Social Philosophy, structure versus agency dichotomy in Sociology, Berger and Luckman propose a more nuanced and dialectical formula by suggesting that while individuals deliberately act, their actions do not take place in a vacuum, but that human actions are circumscribed by social forces beyond their control. What this also means is that while social forces may seem all powerful, entrenched, and unalterable, they are social constructions, human creations and hence can be unconstructed/changed by the same human beings (Quist-Adade, 2012). The dialectical relationship between social institutions and human agency has long been acknowledged by Karl Marx when he made these two observations: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under cir-

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cumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” (Marx, 1852: 7) “Man is a product of circumstances, but man, in turn, modifies those circumstances.” (See Marxism as Action: http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/ 1915/marxism-action.htm). In short, Marx proposed that men are influenced by circumstances, but can change those same circumstances.

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

Anthony Giddens’ Structuration Anthony Giddens (1984) offers a variation of the duality of structure and agency theory with the concept of structuration. He argues that there exists a relationship between structures and actors. Structures are the rules and conditions that guide social action and actors are human subjects who deliberately act in reasoned and planned ways. Structuration involves intersubjective understanding and meaning. “Structures do constrain actors, but actors can also transform structures by thinking about them and acting on them in new ways.” (Jackson and Sorenson, 2011:130) The relationship is a dynamic and dialectical one. Giddens, according to Meyers (2006), has clearly been influenced by the dialectical insights of the critical school. He called his theory structuration. Here are the central premises of the saturation theory: First, social order is reproduced through people’s everyday actions. Second, there is a recursive and dialectical tension between social structure and human agency. Third, social structure and human agency exist not only in dialectical relationship, but they also manifest themselves in both macro and micro levels of social interactions. Giddens distinguished between social structures, social system, and structuration. Structures define social norms, shaping people’s perceptions of what is right and what is wrong. “Structures impose systems comprise on the situated activities of human agents reproduced across time and space…organized as regular social practice.” Giddens1984: 10) Examples of structures and systems include the economy the family and religion. Struc-

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tures and systems operate together, and they are recursively implicated in each other’s conceptualization. “Structuration is the dialectical process through which structures and systems are reproduced.” (Myers 2006: 20) Giddens defines structure as only existing through the actions of participation. If those within society do not participate within the actions of rules set up, the structure no longer exists. Practice is what holds structure together. The duality of structure implies that the medium of the properties of structure of social systems as also the outcome of the system. In other words, the system is needed in order for it to function despite its oppressive nature. The tangible space wouldn’t really exist or work without the structure. Patterns become systems or at least part of systems if they are repeated over and over again. Social structure sets precedence for how to act correctly and resonate within the social memory of society, which in turn deeply effects their actions and agency within that system (Mann, 2011: 177-178). We are bound to the system until we unnormalize what the system is doing. Having said this, we would essentially undo the entire system if we were to completely act of our own agency in large groups (Mann, 2011: 177-178). Giddens delineated three major social structures: (a) signification, which involves the codes that social actors use to make sense of the world and to make meanings. These structures are also called master narratives or metanarratives. Signification influences the mode of discourse of a society. The second structure is domination. Domination involves the unequal distribution of allocative and authoritative resources in society. Allocative resources are raw materials, land, good jobs, and services. Authoritative resources include the ability to speak for oneself, act on owns behalf and act in a credible effective manner. The third structure is legitimation. Legitimation is based on the premise that oppressive structures persist not just because people are powerless to change them, but because they are seen legitimate in the eyes of the masses. In spite of its oppressive nature, the structure is considered to be legitimate because people see it as unchangeable, a fact of reality that just is (Myers 2006: 20). Georg Lukacs (1992) explained this phenomenon with the concept of reification. “Reification is the conceptualization of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly suprahuman terms. Another way of saying this is that reification is the feeling of the products of human activity as though they were something else than human products - such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will.” (Berger and Luckman, 1986) (See also Bauman (1976) A reified structure is likely to be a legitimate structure. According to Myers (2006), legitimation allows the overall structure to persist unchallenged. These structures constrain and circumscribe our actions. Giddens identified three forms of constraints: material, structural, and nega-

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tive sanctions. First, material constraints exist when we do not have the financial or physical means to pursue an action. Like Bourdieu’s notion of economic capital, people low in financial resources, for example, may not be able to afford to attend college or go on a vacation (Myers (2006). People with physical disability may not be able to enter a building because there is no handicapped accessible entrance. Second, “structural constraints are defined as placing limits upon the range of options open to an actor or a plurality of actors, in given circumstance or a type of circumstance.” (Myers 2006: 27) For example racial segregation in housing and schooling makes it difficult for people in impoverished areas to find decent places to live and work. Racial segregation helps to reproduce poverty among minorities, who then have even fewer viable opportunities for improving their life financially (Myers 2006: 27). The last constraint is negative sanctions, which involves one form of punishment or another. An example will when people are followed when they shop in expensive stores or marketplaces that truly are accessible only to the very affluent. Often, in multiracial societies such as Canada or the United States, assumptions are made that black people cannot be affluent therefore they cannot legitimately patronize stores that cater to affluent tastes (Myers 2006: 26). Myers (2006: 27) suggested that taken together various social factors work together to limit people’s range of opportunities despite their dreams, desires, and intentions. For instance, parents tell their children “you can be anything that you want to be if you study hard” and they, in turn, fantasize about being astronauts, doctors and world leaders. But the hard truth is that it is “unlikely that most of these parents will have the resources or opportunities to pursue the kids of studies and experiences necessary in order to realize these dreams even if they try their hardest.” (Myers, 2006: 27) However, far from what pure structuralists would have us believe, people’s lives are not predetermined by their location in the structure. Following the dialectical principle, Giddiness argued that the structure also enables social actors by providing opportunities for action (Myers, 2006). Therefore people are not dunces or puppets, manipulated by some powerful invisible puppeteers; they are not hopelessly shackled by the structure. They are able to make choices and they affect each other according to the choices that they make (Myers, 2006). As Giddens (1990) emphasized, “one person’s constraints is another’s enabling” (134). As we noted above, we are both captains of the ships our destinies, just as we are victims of circumstances. As social actors, we have agency, and often do exercise our agency. However, our actions do not take place in a vacuum. Our actions take place within the confines of social structures, which do circumscribe or constrain our actions. Our actions are driven by motives and at the same time, they are impacted by the law of unintended conse-

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quences. Quite often, our intentions and actions fail to materialize or are broken into smithereens, either because of unforeseen circumstances or our actions produced the opposite results. As the saying goes, the road to heaven is often paved with good intentions. According to the law of intended consequences, the opposite is equally true: the road to hell may be paved with ill intentions. (Quist-Adade, 2012) As Myers (2006) pointed, at the heart of structuration, however, is the fact that individual social actors often act in concert with others. Social actors are not random agents whose actions negate the actions of others. Myers (2006) observed that our actions even if spontaneous are somewhat ordered and systematic, because they stem from our knowledge of, and limitations within, the structures. Actions and order are not separate in Gidden’s theory of structuration. In his words, action and order are an interconnected duality rather than an unrelated dualism (Myers, 2006). “How we act is informed by the structure as it imprints itself on our memory across time and space.” (Myers, 2006, p.30) We also tend to act in ways that reinforce the social order. Myers (2006: 30) concluded that “the social world operates as a reflexive feedback loop in which order influences actions and actions tend to reinforce the order whether intentionally or not.” (Ibid., 30) Refusing to Die Many there are prophets of doom who have sounded the death knell of symbolic interactionism (Saxton, 1989), Yet, symbolic interactionism has refused to die, as it were, evolving, morphing, and revitalizing through intension (precision in theory) and extension (borrowing and branching out to include other perspectives). The marriage of critical theory and symbolic interactionism is emblematic of the revitalizing and staying power of the paradigm. From Social Reality Construction to Critical Constructionism “It is not the world of the journalist that interests me; it is the deeper forces which appear in the crooked mirror of the press.”-Leon Trotsky When the concept of “time,” is mentioned in my village, Teawiah in eastern Ghana, depending on the time of the day, people will either look up in the sky or think about the crowing of the cockerel/rooster. This is because people in Teawiah use the position of the sun in the sky to tell the time of the day. The crowing cockerel also tells them the time in the night. Besides, not many of the villagers own their own wrist watches. Thus, a timepiece will be the last thing on the villagers’ mind when the concept of time is the topic of discussion. But when someone mentions ‘time’ in your classroom, for instance, you are likely to look at your wristwatch, cell phone or at the clock on the wall (if

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there is one). What this illustrates is that ‘time’, like many phenomena we take for granted as normal or natural, is indeed not so at all. The concept we have come to call time thus is a social and cultural construct. It is based on what sociologists term the social construction of reality or simply social constructionism. Human reality is social, meaning it is a social product—a collectively created human experience. “All that is humanly consequential—self, mind, society, culture—emerges from and is dependent on symbolic interactions for its existence.” (Gecas & Tsushima, 2013:1) The socially constructed reality extends beyond human interactions to encompass the natural and physical world. As Gecas & Tsushima (2015: 1) observe, even the physical environment is germane or relevant to human conduct as it is interpreted through symbolic systems. Social constructionism is based on the assumption that there is nothing natural or normal about the world we inhabit. Rather, social reality is created by individuals to reflect certain interests in a world not necessarily of their making (See Wright, 2005; Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). Language is the vehicle through which reality is constructed. Humans make meaning of messages they receive based on the reality of everyday existence. Thus, as there are different realities of everyday existence, it stands to reason that the same message, like a simple question: “what’s the time?” will take on different meanings to people in different societies, as the example of my village above clearly shows. Even within the same society, different people will read different meanings into the same social phenomenon, e.g., a news story. This is because people read and understand media stories/messages based on their racial/ethnic, gender, religious, and class backgrounds. In other words, social reality is thus multidimensional, which means that reality has multiple meanings. As the hackneyed phrase goes, “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” a given social reality means different things to different people.

Social constructionism is based on the assumption that there is nothing natural or normal about the world we inhabit. Rather, social reality is created by individuals to reflect certain interests in a world not necessarily of their making

Another way to look at the social construction of reality is that there is nothing inherently good or bad. People assign moral meanings to social occurrences. For example, there is nothing inherently wrong with polygyny, the marital practice of a man marrying two or more wives. In two-thirds of the world’s societies, polygyny has co-existed with monogamy, the practice of one person having one spouse at a time. In the USA, however, polygyny is not only

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frowned upon, it is proscribed by law in all states, except Utah. In Canada, the British Columbia provincial government has tried several times to have the Supreme Court proscribe the practice in Bountiful. One way to test this theory might be to investigate the meanings that arise from messages transmitted by the mass media. On May 1, 2011 US President Barack Obama in an address to the nation announced the killing of Osama bin Laden by US Navy Seals. CNN and other news outlets carried the same message, which was received by millions of viewers around the world. Hardly had Obama finished his speech than the floodgates opened for multiple interpretations of the US action. Some described the Navy Seal action as murder, while others saw it as assassination. While large crowds of US citizens celebrated the death of “America’s Enemy Number One,” the reaction in the rest of the world was more muted and less celebratory. Supporters of Al Qaeda, of course, were furious, with pledges to avenge their leader’s death at the hands of American troops. While the US described Osama Bin Laden as “Number One Enemy,” his supporters and sympathizers hailed him as a hero and his death as martyrdom. From the social construction perspective, each one of the millions of viewers will read different meanings, or interpret the news about bin Laden’s death differently. So what do you think? What different meanings might this news take on?

•

To a relative of a victim of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, which is believed to have been masterminded by Osama bin Laden?,

• • • • • •

To a supporter of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist group, To a member of Al Qaeda To relatives of Osama bin Laden To a peace activist, To a human rights lawyer or activist And so on....

Intersubjectivities is the notion that, each individual's meanings relate to, and to some extent depend on, the meanings of other individuals’

The meanings that the millions of television viewers made of the Bin Laden’s death stemmed in large measure from the realities of their lived life experiences or their lifeworlds. Berger and Luckmann (2011) point out that these

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realities are intersubjectivities—the notion that, each individual's meanings relate to, and to some extent depend on, the meanings of other individuals’. What this means is that there is a dialectical relationship between a person’s meaning and the meanings of others. Thus, humans cannot escape the conclusion that their communication environment plays an active and important part in their lives. As Wilden (1987) puts it: Many of our apparently unique personal opinions are, in fact, derived from social conditioning by dominant codes of values transmitted by others, beginning in the cradle and including the media of family, school, and popular entertainment, rather than from personal and informed decisions that we actually made for ourselves. (See Berger and Lukman, 2011) We create that which creates us! However, it is not just that everyday reality affects our communication— it is that our communication also affects everyday reality. This is what we mean when we speak of the social construction of reality -- that when we communicate, we participate in the building of the reality that we inhabit. (Beger and Luckman, 2011) Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman’s model of social reality construction better explains this dialectical relationship. According to Berger and Luckman (2011), the process of social reality constructions begins with habit and ends with reification. They argue that some of people's personal habits become public, and that these shared habits eventually become so widely and strongly accepted that they are taken for granted, and passed on from generation to generation as always having been true. “Any actions that are repeated frequently become cast into a pattern, which can then be reproduced with an economy of effort and which...is apprehended by its performer as that pattern (Berger and Luckman, 2011: 1)

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My Soccer God When I was growing up I aspired to become the best soccer player in the world, taking inspiration from the artistry, prowess and fame of soccer legend Pele. To achieve my dream, I decided to create a soccer god. Having observed how a man in my village had created his hunting deity, I created my own soccer deity using the following materials—a porcupine quill, three fowl feathers, a small empty bottle, water, a piece of white cloth (calico) and a black thread. I tied the three feathers around the porcupine quill and placed it in the bottle filled with water. I then buried my deity in a shallow hole in the backyard of the village. Each evening after school, I would sneak to the backyard to practice soccer at my “soccer shrine.” I kicked the soccer ball several times in circles around my soccer god as I chanted prayers: “Help me, let me be a great football (soccer) player!” I did this for a while, until I run out luck one day. As I kicked the ball around in the shrine, I accidentally stepped on the porcupine quill, which penetrated deep into my left foot. Needless to say the accident spelled the end of my soccer god. What’s the significance of this story? Had I continued with the worship of my soccer god for a while and assuming that my soccer skills had begun to improve, I would mostly likely have invited my soccer playmates to worship with me. With time, the worship will take on a life of its own; it will develop into an institution with rules and regulations, norms and values and hierarchical positions. In the distant future, when I and my soccer pals are dead and gone, the fact that the soccer god was created by me, a human being, will be lost on the new generation of worshippers.

These habits are shared with others through interaction and communication. With the passage of time, the habits take on a life of their own; they become institutionalized, naturalized and eventually legitimized by the ruling elite. The process is complete when the original habit becomes reified, i.e., it is given human qualities. This is akin to one creating a deity and then worshipping that deity; treating it as a living thing or superhuman being and kowtowing to and surrendering one’s willpower to that deity. If an institution remains permanent for a long period of time, people may forget how it was created in the first place. In these cases, people may begin to imagine that the institution has always existed; that it just "came to be" at some point in the past. This condition is known as reification, and such institutions are said to be reified. “Reification is the conceptualization or understanding of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly suprahuman terms. Another way of saying this is that reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something else than human products - such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of di-

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vine will.”(Berger and Luckman, 2011: 2) Once an institution has become reified, people relate to it and to its roles as if they were as real as anything found in nature. Generally, people do not think about this. Things have been this way as long as they can remember, and they see no need to imagining that they might change. Critical constructionism (used interchangeably with critical constructivism) is a theoretical framework based on the assumption that the way social reality is constructed, perceived and presented usually reflects the interests of society’s elite more than those of the mainstream, and often at the expense of those with the least power in society. (See Littlejohn and Foss, 2008) Crudely put, the critical constructivist perspective posits that while human reality is collectively constructed by all members of collectives, what becomes acceptable reality must first be sanctioned, sanctified, and legitimized by the power /ruling elite. Thus, the main focus of critical constructivism is on the relationships between power and knowledge. It combines conflict theory (which focuses on the struggle for power resources between groups) and social constructionism (which treats reality as a human creation, rather than natural or divinely inspired). Critical constructionism differs from social constructionism only in that it emphasizes the role of elite interests in the process of reality construction. In education, for example, critical constructivism focuses on the relations between learner and educator in the context of social and cultural diversity and power. Several assumptions underpin the critical constructivist approach to reality, knowledge creation and dissemination. •

• •

•

First, there can be many versions of events and that these require questioning: Where are ideas coming from? Whose interests are being served? Whose interests are excluded? Second, knowledge is situated, partial and provisional/temporary and open to many interpretations. Third, the purpose of critical constructivism is to foster a way of looking at events, experiences and assumptions so that the status quo is challenged. Fourth, critical constructivists critique the power structures that produce, embed and render invisible knowledge in everyday practices.

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Marx on Critical Constructivism “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.”

Critical constructivism allows us to problematize, challenge, and disrupt embedded, naturalized and invisibilized oppressive social structures and practices such as patriarchy, sexism, racism, and heterosexism. In other words, the critical constructivist perspective allows us to adopt a critical approach to reality, questioning taken-for-granted assumptions and conventional or received wisdoms/truths and notions. Corporate crime and street crime To illustrate how critical constructivism might be employed in rendering the invisible visible, let’s use the following question: Why are some seemingly harmful social phenomena considered social problems while other similar harmful phenomena are not? More concretely, why is the police force more aggressive in combating street crime than corporate crime, for example? The commonsensical or obvious answer is likely to be street crimes are more dangerous than corporate crime. Critical constructivist will, however, disagree. Corporate is as inimical, if not more harmful to society. Critical constructivist will focus on power relations, how the power elite, are able to present street crime as very harmful and dangerous, while sanitizing and “invisibilizing” corporate crime. In short, what constitutes a social problem is defined by the elite who successfully divert public attention from corporate crime to street crime. For example, successive United States administrations have consistently engaged in state-sponsored terrorism in Global South countries, such as Angola and Nicaragua, yet similar acts by other nations were quickly labeled terrorism, with swift condemnation, and in many cases, direct military response. The US’ invasion of Iraq and ousting of Colonel Muammar Gadhafi from power are cases in point. Why so? How? Critical constructivist explains how this is done by using Antonio Gramsci’s concept, hegemony-- the process of control and domination by the ruling elite through consensus of the controlled/dominated. Hegemony is the process of domination, indoctrination and mind control in which the ideas of the ruling elite are inculcated into the governed through sophisticated, subtle and via multiple channels. The process of indoctrination is carried out through a panoply of socialization channels/agents—the family, media,

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education, etc., and is done with such sophistication and “sleight of hand” that ordinary citizens come to accept the ideas of the elite as natural and the received wisdom. The concept hinges on the premise that the ruling elite “maintain a certain degree of consensual hegemony by neutralizing the pressures of various contending forces that might otherwise trigger profound structural transformations.”(Ibid) Hegemony is, therefore, an expression of broadly based consent, manifested in the acceptance of ideas, and supported by material resources and institutions. Simply put, hegemony is a “style of state politics that preserves control by a leading group on the one hand while instituting economic, social, political and ideological changes on the other.”(Muchie and Xing, 2006, p.1) Unlike the classical Marxist view of absolute control of ideological and cultural discourse by the dominant capitalist class, the neo-Marxist hegemony theory as postulated by Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1971) advances a more flexible, fluid and on-going dynamic between super-ordinate and subordinates groups, between the rulers and the ruled. The hegemony involves resistance and incorporation, coercion and consent; enlightened coercion by the ruling elite and consent from the ruled. In other words, the power elite do not simply force their ideas onto the people, but shape and win consent so that the power of the dominant classes appears both legitimate and natural. (Dyson, 2003) But it is important to note that hegemony is not a one-way street or a zerosum game in which the ruling elites go unchallenged. Rather, there is a limit to elite ideology, and the oppressed can and do fight back. In other words, the dominant ideology is open to the challenge by alternative and oppositional interpretations by the oppressed. This suggests an ongoing battle between elite discourse and non-elite discourse. Elite ideology is likely to be contested and even subverted through the process of counter-hegemony. Counter-hegemony entails alternative and oppositional viewpoints, which seek to resist and undermine the dominant ideology. It may take several forms, including (a) Negotiated Counter-hegemony in which the oppressed engage in negotiated understandings of elite ideology by espousing alternative viewpoints, staking intermediate, compromised position. This involves the blending of alternative, dominant and oppositional viewpoints (b) Oppositional counter-hegemony, which involves a wholesale repudiation of the dominant ideology of the ruling elite by the oppressed.

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Highlights •

• • • • • •

•

Hegemony: is a process of control and domination by the ruling elite through consensus of the controlled/dominated. It is the process of domination, in which one set of ideas subverts or co-opts another. Through hegemony, one group exerts leadership over all others, and its interests are promoted above those of others. Hegemony can occur when events and texts are interpreted in a way that promotes the interests of one group over others. Among other sites, organizations are a place in which hegemony occurs. Hegemony is the perpetuation of social injustices (i.e. classism, racism, sexism, heterosexism) Hegemony allows for the powerful elites to retain their power while non-violently controlling the less powerful groups. Hegemony is perpetuated through social consensus, social reforms, and social structures including schools, church, media, political system and family. Proponent: Antonio Gramsci

The Postmodern Turn of Symbolic Interactionism In the concluding pages of this chapter, we explore the postmodern turn of Symbolic Interactionism. Before we proceed further, here again, is summary of the basic tenants of Symbolic Interactionism. Box 11:2 - Ten Elements of Symbolic Interactionism 1. People construct their own actions – they are deliberate intentional and creative 2. People attribute to, and construct meanings of, their situations and behavior; people impose meanings on situations 3. Significance of subjective meanings and the symbols and symbol systems (e.g. language and communication) by which they are produced and represented 4. Understanding individuals’ definitions in their terms, i.e. in any situation there are many definitions of the situation – multiple realities; the self is a social product, constructed through interaction with ‘significant others’ which occurs in relation to multiple ‘reference groups’ 5. Significance of negotiation – the process by which meanings are constructed 6. Significance of the natural, social context/environment/ setting in understanding meaning and meaning construction 7. Situations and people are unique and individual (idiographic)

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8. The nature of a ‘career’ – the moving perspective in which people regard their own and others’ lives, based on the meanings which are being formed; ‘career’ includes notions of commitment and identity 9. Research must include ‘thick description’ – detailed accounts of the situation and participants’ meanings and behavior 10. Analysis is ‘emic’ rather than ‘etic’ – generating meaning through participants’ subjective constructed accounts

Postmodernism emerged as an antithesis to the Enlightenment project The Enlightenment emphasized liberal and democratic values and promoted individualism, individual rights, and privacy (Seidman, 1994a, p. 49). The Enlighteners were also staunch supporters of equality, and insisted on secularization, i.e., the separation of the church and state (Seidman, 1994a, p. 49). At the same time, the Enlightenment scholars’ assumption that humans were uniform everywhere, despite the fact that it was meant to “discredit social hierarchies that rested upon the idea of different races and rankings of human beings”, resulted in the promotion of “intolerance towards human diversity and the assertion of social differences between individuals and groups” (Seidman, 1994a, p. 49; See Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013). The modern period during which the Enlightenment thinkers lived and observed was characterized by grand narratives about reason, rationality, justice, progress, truth, common sense, nature, market, modernization, democracy, republicanism, liberal, universal, natural rights, bureaucracy, unity, linear, and universalizing discourse about the following binaries: individual, science positivism, production, Individual over communal, Secular over religious, centered over decentered thought. This period also saw an anthropocentric discourse that that emphasized human control over nature. (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) Postmodernity took a radically divergent tack. Here a brief summary of the postmodernist rebuttal to modernism: In our postmodern reality, postmodernist contend, requires a rupture from the past and a challenge to reason. They attack notion of universal truth of modernity and resort to a playful aggressions on the modernist ideal that the world we live in is reasonable and responsive to the human desire for progress and a better world. They contend that postmodern reality is shaped by the “power equation”, signs, undecidability, decentered, plurality, ambiguity, deconstruction, consumption, information, subjectivity, language, oppression, simulations, representations. (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013)

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Postmodernism Postmodernism as a perspective that rejects the search for grand theories or unifying explanations for social reality, but instead conceives social reality as heterogeneous, fluid, fragmentary, plural, unstable, and shifting. It connotes both a genre of artistic style and a set of theoretical and philosophical tenets. Postmodernism is characterized by extreme relativism, rejecting other theories, which can be tested according to rational, universal principles. Postmodernists hold everything to ridicule. (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) Postmodernism makes several assumptions. First, we now live in postcapitalist/post-modern, world and therefore have a need for new social theories. Second, the grand theories like functionalism, feminism, Marxism, etc., no more offer adequate tools of analysis. Third, the grand theories are flawed, in that they define social reality in terms of dichotomies (male/female, human/machine, man/nature, nature/culture, self/other, primitive/complex, capitalist/proletariat; these dichotomies are myths and they distort reality. Postmodern social reality is messy, fractured, and fluid. (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) Postmodernists challenge absolute truth, claiming there is no one truth but many truths; no one large story about the world; only small stories. They privilege multiple perspectives of class, race, gender, of many other group affiliations. Postmodernists use subjugated knowledge to unmask and transform oppressive power relations. They insist that social reality is language games. No one language is truer or superior to others. Postmodernism emphasizes the role of the unconsciousness, reinterpreting knowledge as socially constructed and historically situated instead of a timeless representation of the world by separate individuals. (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) The intellectual roots of postmodernism can trace to the writings of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan and Baudrillard and Barth. Most of these thinkers were disillusioned Marxists. Some alleged that Marxism is too deterministic and too reductionist, while others were disappointed neo-Marxists who found it hard to come to terms with the collapse of communism. (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) Postmodernity and Postmodernism Post-modernism is a paradigm used by post-modernists to make sense of the changes that have affected the world since the 1960s. As a critical and radically –oriented paradigm, post-modernism offers a critique of modern Western ways of thinking (Glense, 2011, p. 12). Post-modernism is a general term that is used to “describe the new aesthetic cultural and intellectual forms and

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practices which [have been] emerging [since the 1980s]” (Thompson, 1996, p. 569; See Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) A central argument posited by postmodernists is that it is no longer possible to distinguish between culture and society (Strinati, 1995, p. 223). The postmodern world is characterized by the centrality and power of the mass media and popular culture and the ways in which the popular culture shapes and defines all forms of social relations (Strinati, 1995, p. 223). What we define as real and the truth about the world is more than over-determined and defined by the cultural forms, images, and signs we encounter in our every-day-livings (Strinati, 1995, p. 224). Postmodernists argue that the mass media does not reflect reality. Also, the mass media does not simply distort reality since this assumes that there is an objective reality out there (Strinati, 1995, p. 224). Rather, the mass media’s constructions of reality are the only types of realities that are known to us (Strinati, 1995, p. 224;: (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) For postmodernists, the future is here. They contend that we no longer live in the modern world. Thus, postmodernists reject anything that relates to the modern project, including the search for grand theories or unifying explanations for social reality. Instead, they conceive postmodern social reality as heterogeneous, fluid, fragmentary, plural, unstable, and shifting. Postmodernism connotes both a genre of artistic style and a set of theoretical and philosophical tenets. Postmodernism is characterized by extreme relativism, rejecting other theories, which can be tested according to rational, universal principles. It holds everything to ridicule (Wallace and Wolf, 2006). Postmodernists make several assumptions about social theory and knowledge construction. First, they maintain that we now live in postcapitalist/post-modern, world and therefore have a need for new social theories. Second, they claim that the prevailing, modernist grand theories (metatheories), such as functionalism, feminism, Marxism, symbolic interactionism, etc., no more offer adequate tools for social analysis. Third, they insist that the grand theories define social reality in terms of dichotomies (male/female, human/machine, man/nature, nature/culture, self/other, primitive/complex, capitalist/proletariat, and that these dichotomies are myths which distort reality. (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) Postmodernists challenge absolute truth, claiming there is not one truth but many truths; no one large story about the world; only small stories. They privilege multiple perspectives of class, race, gender, of many other group affiliations. Postmodernists use subjugated knowledge to unmask and transform oppressive power relations. They insist that social reality is language games and insist that no one language is truer or superior to others. Postmodernism emphasizes the role of the unconsciousness, reinterpreting knowledge

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as socially constructed and historically situated instead of a timeless representation of the world by separate individuals. (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) Another related argument advanced by postmodernists is that it is now more difficult to distinguish between the economy and popular culture (Strinati, 1995, p. 224). What we consume (the economy) is determined by the popular culture. For example, we buy cellphones to communicate with one another. As we surf the Internet using our cell-phones, we receive advertisements that use cultural references and symbols that influence our purchasing and consumption habits. When we watch sitcoms, we may be influenced by fashion statements expressed through the characters of these sitcoms and purchase clothing and other fashion accessories that are worn by the characters in these sitcoms (or by characters in our favorite music videos). We may be also influenced by the product placements in such programs, such as the Brand of potato chips, soft drinks, and beer (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) In the postmodern world, we increasingly consume products, images, and signs for their symbolic values rather than for their use value or usefulness. That is, in the consumption of goods, we are not concerned about questions of utility or value: they are ignored. For example, we purchase a Gucci watch not because we want to be able to tell time, but because a Gucci watch or purse connotes our position in the hierarchy of society. As Strinati (1995, p. 225) maintained, “this is evident in popular culture itself when surface and style, what things look like, and playfulness and jokes, are said to predominate at the expense of content, substance, and meaning”. We also experience reality through computer images and programs such as virtual reality computer graphics (e.g., Grand Theft Auto video game). Postmodernists maintain that these images that are surface stimulations have the potential to replace real relations (Strinati, 1995, p. 225). In the postmodern world, in addition, it is difficult to distinguish between popular culture and (high) art. Art has become a commercialized enterprise itself. It has also become increasingly incorporated into the economic world and the economy as it is used to entice people to consume more due to the role it plays in the world of advertisement (Strinati, 1995, p. 226). “Another aspect is that postmodern popular culture refuses to respect the pretentious and distinctiveness of art” (Strinati, 1995, p. 226). Postmodernist thinkers also question the evolutionary and linear conception of time. History, for them, is not based on clear sequences of linear events that follow one another in a predictable and orderly manner (Strinati, 1995, p. 227). Unlike the modern thinkers, these scholars argue that the postmodern popular culture undermines our sense of a coherent sense of space and time and does not reflect it

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(Strinati, 1995, p. 227). The postmodern culture is one which is outside history (Strinati, 1995, p. 227). Postmodernism makes several assumptions. First, since we now live in postcapitalist/post-modern world, there is a need for new social theories. Postmodernity refers to a historical epoch during which there has been a change from an emphasis on manufacturing to information society. Ritzer (2000, p. 223) maintained that there is a need to distinguish between post-modernity and post-modern social theory. He defined post-modernity as “a new historical epoch that is supposed to have succeeded the modern era, or modernity” (Ritzer, 2000, p. 223). Post-modern social theory or post-modernism, Ritzer asserted (2000, p. 223), is the way that we come to understand and conceptualize post-modernity. Post-modernism is a shift in paradigm and how we come to think about the social world since the 1960s. We can label postmodernism as the third shift in paradigms about the world since the 1750s (Mirfakhraie & Quist-Adade, 2013). The first shift in paradigm was characterized by the move from isolated nomadic communities of hunters and gatherers to feudal societies with city-states and agrarian support system. The second shift is characterized by the move from the tribal and feudal societies to a capitalist industrial-based economy relying on scientific technology, unlimited consumption, social progress, unrestrained economic growth and rational thought. The third shift is the post-modern paradigm that is characterized by fast-changing and cyclical concepts of time with sundry cultures and many genres of expression and is sometimes called the global international revolution. The post-modern age is characterized by “a loss of rational and social coherence in favor of cultural images and social forms and identities by fragmentation, multiplicity, plurality, and indeterminacy” (Thompson, 1996, p. 566). Postmodernists claim that we have now entered a new, post-capitalist and post-industrial era. The old order of thinking and theorizing has given way to a new era, a postmodern era. In short, post-modernity is characterized by the process of globalization. In this light, globalization is characterized by “the spread of information technologies and the fragmentation of nationstates” (Glesne, 2011, p. 12; (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) Giddens, however, argued that we have not entered the age of postmodernity. Rather, he posited that we are entering late modernity, where the effects of modernity are more pronounced and universalized (Giddens, 1990, p. 3). Giddens uses terms such as “high”, “radical”, or “late” modernity to refer to the world today. For his part, Ulrich Beck maintained that today’s society is best described as a “risk society”, whereas the classical stage of modernity is associated with industrial society. The central problem in new modernity is how to prevent, minimize, and channel risk (i.e., the risk of nuclear disasters and war). Yet, the main concern remains the maximization of rationality in

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terms of both the system and the life-world (Ritzer, 2000, p. 222). Ritzer agreed that rationality is the key process of “high modernity”. Ritzer introduced the concept of the McDonaldization of Society to point to the increase in formal rationality in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries with its associated dangers of an “iron cage” bureaucracy (Ritzer, 2000, p. 222). In short, post-modernity means several things (Giddens, 1990, p. 46): 1. 2. 3.

“Nothing can be known with any certainty" due to the fact that modern "foundations of epistemology have been shown to be unreliable”. “History is devoid of teleology and consequently, no version of progress can plausibly be defended”. “A new social and political agenda has come into being with the increasing prominence of ecological concerns and perhaps of new social movements generally”.

Postmodernity highlights a break with modernity (Glesne, 2011, p. 12). Modernity refers to a historical period, which was marked by the industrial revolution, the rise of the nation-states as a dominant form of political structure, and mechanization of society (Glesne, 2011, p. 12). Modernity is characterized by several factors: formal logic is thought to be a necessary aspect for reason, the process of the bureaucratization of society that refers to the process of rationalization and its effects on how humans organize their activities, the belief that through application of technological innovation and scientific knowledge it is possible to solve all the ills of society and social and cultural as well as economic problems (Glesne, 2011, p. 12). Modernity assumes that there is knowable objective world external to human subjectivity. “Science” was assumed to provide us with answers about the world and solutions to world’s problems such as poverty: (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) “Modern science and modernity have given us a great many benefits; better communication, better transportation, better roads, buildings, bridges, sewer systems and better housing. It continues to improve the means of production of food, shelter, clothing, and medicine. Yet, it has many problems in that it dismisses complexity; dismisses mystery; objects to surprise and is hostile to the emotions which expand the endpoints of human endeavor. It is a [sic] magician's apprentice which may well be misused with applications to war, to exploitation of people and environment as well as to the reproduction of its own lifeless, soulless, amoral approach to human knowledge and human frailty” (Young, 2012). Lyotard (as cited in Giddens, 1990, p. 2) defined post-modernity as “a shift away from attempts to ground epistemology and from faith in humanly engineered progress”. The condition of post-modernity is believed to be distin-

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guished by the loss of the importance of grand-narratives. Grand-narratives are those overarching ‘storylines’ through which humans “are placed in history as beings having a definite past and a predictable future” (Giddens, 1990, p. 2). The second assumption of post-modernists is that the grand theories, such as functionalism, feminism, Marxism, etc., do not offer adequate tools of analysis. The third argument of postmodernists is that the grand theories that define social reality in terms of dichotomies, such as male/female, human/machine, man/nature, nature/culture, self/other, primitive/complex, and capitalist/proletariat are inadequate ways of viewing and understanding the world. These dichotomies are considered as myths that distort reality rather than represent or explain it. (Quist-Adade and Mirfahkraie, 2013) Post-modernists tend to reject those modern perspectives that were outlined by the early modern social theorists in understanding the world of politics, economy, and culture (Ritzer, 2000, p. 222). They, for example, reject the adequacy of the grand-narratives of classical sociological theories to explain and describe the world in its totality. Theories of Marxism and structuralfunctionalism are considered as grand-theories or grand-narratives. By this, it is meant that these theories were assumed to explain social, political, cultural, and economic relations and structures in all parts of the world, and were considered as unified theories that could provide a single vision and paradigm to understand human relations and structures both locally and globally. These modern theories attempted to explain “how societies work and how people develop and interact” (Glesne, 2011, p. 12). Post-modernists argue that one theory cannot explain the world and that “there is no universal truth to be discovered because all human investigations are grounded in human society and can only produce partial locally and historically specific insights” (Delamont, as cited in Glesne, 2011, p. 12). Post-modernists, in fact, tend to prefer “more limited explanations or even no explanations at all” (Ritzer, 2000, p. 223). They are critical of putting boundaries between different disciplines, such as sociology as distinct from philosophical thinking or storytelling (Ritzer, 2000, p. 223). Post-modernists “are often more interested in shocking . . . the reader than they are in engaging in careful, reasoned academic discourse”, which are the characteristics of modern theoretical thinking (Ritzer, 2000, p. 223). Instead of looking at how rationality or capitalist exploitation works in society, post-modernists are more interested to look at “more peripheral aspects of society” (Ritzer, 2000, p. 223). In this sense, postmodernism is a form of critical theory that questions the scientific and analytical aspects of sociology (Turner, 2003, p. 227). The post-modern social theory defines the post-modern world as a consumer society (Ritzer, 2000, 226). That is, consumption plays an important role in organizing society and people’s behaviors and conceptions of reality. Postmodernism looks at micro-politics, power relations in various local contexts, and interrogates “discourses, lan-

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guage games, or interpretative communities” (Thompson, 1996, p. 570). As such, it tends to promote political change through multiple and local struggles. According to Fredric Jameson (Ritzer, 2000, p. 223), post-modernity is: “a depthless and superficial world”; a world of simulation, that is, rather than experiencing a real jungle, we prefer to go to Disneyland's jungle cruise, which is a copy and “man-made” (sic) construction of the real thing; “a world that is lacking affect and emotion”; a world that one's place in history is lost, where it is difficult to distinguish between past, present, and future; a world where the productive and exploitive technologies of modernity such as automobile assembly lines are replaced with “implosive, flattening, reproductive technologies of television and visual culture”. Thompson maintained (1996, p. 568), Baudrillard saw the post-modern world as one where culture is produced through an emphasis “on images (simulations) in which it is no longer possible to distinguish the ‘real’ from the copy that ‘improves on the real’. In this new postmodern world, the hyper-real replaces the real. In this sense, Baudrillard defined post-modernity as a cultural period that highlights “the death of meaning” (Thompson, 2011, p. 568). Post-modernity is an attempt to transcend modernity. Transcending modernity is achieved in eight distinct but interrelated ways: 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

We need to be critical of the view that we can and should control and exploit nature. We need to learn to live in harmony with nature and move away from a postanthropocentric view. We need to develop ways of promoting peace and harmony without resort to militaristic options. We need to become critical of patriarchal views and seek to dismantle the ways in which we subordinate women by creating social structures that are inclusive of both masculine and feminine worlds equally. We need to become critical of Eurocentric views that assume other cultures are inferior to European values and cultural norms or economic, political and technological systems. We need to become inclusive of indigenous forms of knowledge as legitimate knowledge. Scientific knowledge is not the only way to understand and approach the social and natural worlds. There are numerous other forms of moral, religious and cultural intuitions that shed light on the truth about the world. These types of

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knowledge and ways of knowing must inform public policy formations. 9. We need to become critical of expert knowledge based on mechanistic perspectives of modern sciences that aim at controlling the universe. Rather, we should strife toward an ecologically-informed consensus that accounts for interdependency of various factors and structures. 10. We must become aware of the consequences of nationalism and nationalistic views and replace these ideas with a set of principles that promote the welfare of the world population. 11. The world needs to be conceptualized as an organism rather than a machine. The earth is our home rather than a possession of humans. We are interconnected souls rather than atomized individuals.

Fig. 11:1 Types of postmodernism Radical postmodernism

“-…by moving beyond the real to the hyperreal.” (Lemert,53)

Strategic postmodernism

“-…neither gives up on nor overrates modernity’s power.” (Lemert,53)

Radical modernism

“-…radicalizing the most powerful critical modern culture to attack real totalizing effects.” (Lemert,53)

Due to its emphasis on diversity and difference rather than sameness (a characteristic of modernity), it is a paradigm that highlights the views of the less privileged in society. Post-modernism is critical of imperialism and focuses on the effects and legacies of colonialism and the ways in which colonial structures and relations subjugated other groups based on specific conceptions of race, ethnicity, and nationality (Glesne, 2011, p.12). It analyzes how colonialism is practiced and continues to affect people by problematizing the multiple ways through which colonialism informs the lives of people across the globe (i.e., through language, values, customs, positions of power, and borders). It attempts to open up spaces for the voices of non-dominant groups to talk about their experiences and to speak for themselves (Thompson, 1996, p. 570). Postmodernism emphasizes micro-politics and local issues. It highlights how societies are fragmented by emphasizing on discontinuities between past, present, and future (Thompson, 1996, 569-570). It questions the as-

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sumption that through the application of scientific knowledge and technological innovations reason will triumph over nature (Thompson, 1996, p. 569570). Postmodernism is critical of Western humanist and modernist ideals that have shaped how we think about the world around us (these ideas form the center). It seeks to make the center inclusive of the voices of nonWesterners (to make it more diverse). The goal is to forge a non-hierarchical view of the world, disrupting and debunking the conventional superiorinferior mindset prevalent in Western societies. It is a way of dismantling the hegemony of Western knowledge (Glesney, 2011, p. 12-13). Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Arjun Appadurai are important figures who have attempted to theorize based on the experiences of marginalized people in the world and question the dualist thinking so prevalent in Western ways of thinking. Post-modernism is a way to challenge the old modernism (Hall, 1996, p. 17). The intellectual roots of postmodernism have been traced to the writings of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Barth. Most of these thinkers became critical of Marxism. Some alleged that Marxism is too deterministic and reductionist, while others were disappointed by neo-Marxists who found it hard to come to terms with the collapse of communism. Foucault and Baudrillard maintained that theories such as Marxism are incapable of explaining current development since the 1960s; however, Neo-Marxists such as Harvey and Jameson asserted that “post-modernist developments can be incorporated into the renovated Marxist framework” (Thompson, 1996, p. 566). In general, postmodernism refers to a set of diffused sentiments rather than to a set of common doctrines. Post-modernism indicates that humanity can and must go beyond the modern. Postmodernism is a perspective that rejects the search for grand theories or unifying explanations for social reality, but instead, it conceives of social reality as heterogeneous, fluid, fragmentary, plural, unstable, and shifting. It connotes both a genre of artistic style and a set of theoretical and philosophical tenets. Postmodernism is characterized by extreme relativism, rejecting other theories, which can be tested according to rational, universal principles. Although the world today is much different from the world that Marx, Weber, and Durkheim theorized about, a number of contemporary scholars argue that there are more continuities between the modern world and the so-called post-modern world that meets the eye (Ritzer, 2000, p. 222). There are at least eleven different ways that postmodernism has been defined and understood: 12. It is a historical period that signals the major changes taking place in modern industrial and technological age. 13. It refers to a collection of aesthetic styles in art and architecture that are multiple and eclectic.

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14. It is a framework that criticizes liberalism and communism as examples of unified and all-encompassing systems of political and economic organization. 15. It is a way to critique modern understandings of truth, language, knowledge and power by exploring the internal contradictions of theories that attempt to explain social, economic, political and cultural events (meta-narratives). It is a philosophical movement. 16. It is a cultural critique that highlights the negative consequences of modernity in terms of technological influences. In its place, it attempts to offer ways through which a holistic and ecologically sustainable global community could be constructed. 17. A radical approach to both the past and future that simultaneously criticizes and accepts, honors and subverts, embraces and limits, and constructs and deconstructs. It is a double-voiced framework of understanding the world after modernity. 18. It is a movement characterized by critique of the materialist conceptions of modernity. 19. It is a framework that not only celebrates other peoples and cultures but also acknowledges the histories and voices of women and racialized groups. 20. It is a revolutionary historical period during which the basic assumptions of modern age and the cosmology of modernity are subverted and questioned. 21. It informs ecological and ecumenical frameworks and approaches that are not based on conceptions of dominance and control that define modern approaches to nature and the physical world. 22. It is a de-centering movement based on post-structuralism that focuses on the margins and borders of the social world. It questions the values and views of those who control the center of power and knowledge and offer their understandings of the world as the truth about the world, ignoring the knowledge systems of those in the margins as unimportant or lacking objectivity. Critique of Postmodernism Critics fault postmodernism of its extreme relativism. They allege that for postmodernism, everything and anything go, as there are no unifying moral values that can be applied universally. There are no conceptions of right or

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wrong. Despite such criticism, it is important to note that the world is becoming more diverse and culturally plural and there are a number of competing ideologies and episteme (understanding of knowledge) that inform peoples behaviors and actions. Thus, scholars sympathetic to the postmodernist paradigm, see an emancipatory and empowering potential in this new perspective, in that it seeks to disrupt and decentre the existing oppressive and dominating structures in society. Postmodernists challenge any claim to absolute truth, arguing that there is no one truth, but many truths. They maintain that there is no one all-encompassing story about the world that can explain it; there are only small stories that highlight the fragmented nature of life. They privilege multiple perspectives of class, race, and gender of many other group affiliations. Postmodernists use subjugated knowledge to unmask and transform oppressive power relations. They insist that social reality is a form of language games. No one language (discourse) is truer or superior to others. Postmodernism emphasizes the role of the unconsciousness, reinterpreting knowledge as socially constructed and historically situated instead of a timeless representation of the world.

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Endnotes 1

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf brought attention to the relationship between language, thought, and culture. Neither of them formally wrote the hypothesis nor supported it with empirical evidence, but through a thorough study of their writings about linguistics, researchers have found two main ideas. 1.

a theory of linguistic determinism that states that the language you speak determines the way that you will interpret the world around you.

2.

a weaker theory of linguistic relativism that states that language merely influences your thoughts about the real world.

Edward Sapir studied the research of Wilhelm von Humboldt. About one hundred years before Sapir published his linguistic theories, Humboldt wrote in Gesammelte Werke a strong version of linguistic determinism: “Man lives in the world about him principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents it to him.” Sapir took this idea and expanded on it. Although he did not always support this firm hypothesis, his writings state that there is clearly a connection between language and thought. “Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression in their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection: The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached…Even comparatively simple acts of perception are very much more at the mercy of the social patterns called words than we might suppose…We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. …from The Status of Linguistics as a Science (1929) Benjamin Lee Whorf was Sapir’s student. Whorf devised the weaker theory of linguistic relativity: “We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe…”

190

Endnotes

“We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds–and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way–an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees.” …from Science and Linguistics (1940/1956) Source: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis | i love english language 2

See http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1311november-2013/karl-marx-anthropologist 3

Ibid.

Index A Achieved statuses, 47 Agents of secondary socialization, 72 Ascribed statuses, 47

B back-stage behaviour, 122 Behavior, 23, 45, 46, 183 Behaviorism, 52, 63, 68, 97 Berger, 7, 12, 13, 152, 153, 155, 159, 160, 162, 180 Blumer, 19, 20, 24, 25, 28, 50, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 149, 180 Breaching, 134 Breaching experiments, 134

C class, 177 cognitive, 30, 42, 48, 52, 53, 62, 63 Communication, 23, 184 Cooley, 9, 15, 54, 68, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120 counter-hegemony, 164 Critical Constructionism, 157, 183

D Darwinism, 53, 63, 71, 98 definition of the situation, 4, 8, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123 determinist, 6, 7, 15 Dewey, 49, 50, 51, 61, 62, 69, 71, 98, 181 dramaturgy, 121, 125 Du Bois, 50

Durkheim, 10, 11, 12, 13, 22, 37, 40, 56, 57, 64, 151 dyads,, 29, 58, 60, 65

E emancipatory, 177 epistemology, 181 epoche, 129 ethnomethodology., 8, 15

F Formal Organizations, 48 front stage, 122, 123, 125 functionalism, 22

G game, 93, 94, 99, 100, 164 Garfinkel, 9, 15, 134, 182 generalized other, 72, 92, 93, 94, 99, 100, 150 geometry of social relations, 58, 65 gesture, 69, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 91, 93, 149 Giddens, 7, 152, 154, 155, 156, 182 Goffman, 49, 54, 62, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 182 Goffmanian, 124, 126 Gramsci, 163, 164, 183 Groups, 48, 130, 179

H hegemony, 163, 164 Herbert Blumer, 9, 15, 19, 44, 49, 56, 61, 101, 149 Homan, 142 Human nature, 68, 72 Hurssel, 127, 131

192

Index

I I, 94, 96, 100 Idealization, 124, 125 institutions, 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 15, 19, 23, 33, 42, 45, 55, 59, 72, 115, 121, 124, 139, 144, 150, 152, 153, 161, 164 interactionism, 4, 8, 9, 15, 19, 21, 22, 28, 30, 42, 45, 49, 53, 54, 56, 63, 133, 147, 150, 157, 185 interactionist, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 15, 22, 26, 27, 29, 33, 45, 52, 71, 98, 116, 117, 118, 120, 147, 151, 152 Interlinkage of Action, 111, 112, 114 interpretive, 20, 54, 64, 101, 104, 111, 113, 147

J James, 42, 49, 50, 51, 61, 62, 70, 73, 75, 77, 98, 115, 180, 182, 183, 185, 186 Jane Addams, 50 joint action, 4, 6, 111, 112, 114, 149

K

Me, 94, 96, 100 Mead, 1, 9, 15, 24, 49, 50, 51, 54, 61, 63, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 115, 121, 125, 149, 151, 185 metatheory, 9, 15, 30, 46, 140, 145 micro, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 19, 21, 29, 36, 40, 41, 54, 58, 59, 63, 121, 123, 150, 151, 154 Microsociology, 9, 56 Mind, 1, 14, 20, 23, 24, 25, 45, 50, 51, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 87, 99, 150, 181, 183, 185, 186 Minimax theory, 140, 145 misrepresentation., 124, 125 Myers, 155, 156, 157, 182, 185 mystification, 124, 125

N Nkrumah, 185 non-significant symbols, 4 norm, 47, 56

O of the generalized other, 92, 93, 95, 96, 99

Knowledge, 41, 130, 180, 187

L Labelling, 116, 118 Language, 23, 46, 69, 97, 130, 158 looking-glass self, 68, 115 Luckman, 7, 12, 152, 153, 155, 160, 162

M macro, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 29, 36, 40, 41, 54, 59, 63, 72, 123, 144, 151, 154 Macrosociology, 9 Marx, 10, 11, 12, 13, 22, 37, 40, 55, 57, 151, 153, 154, 185 material self, 52, 62

P paradigm, 177 Parsons, 10, 11, 12, 151 personality, 11, 37, 42, 48, 59, 61, 65, 115 phenomenological reduction, 128 Phenomenological reduction, 128, 129 phenomenology,, 8, 15 Philosophy of Money, 57, 61, 187 play stage, 93, 99 Plummer, 27, 28, 185 Postmodernism, 177 power of the situation, 118, 119 Pragmatism, 49, 50, 62, 69, 71, 98 pre-play, 93, 100 pre-symbolic, 93, 100

193

Index

primary groups, 58, 65, 115 Psychological Social Psychology, 30

Q Quist-Adade, 3, 7, 13, 23, 55, 128, 152, 153, 157, 186

R Rational Choice, 139, 142, 143, 144, 145 Rational Choice Theory, 139, 144 reflective, 68, 70, 95, 128, 142 Reflexivity, 71, 87, 98 Reification, 155, 161 Ritzer, 22, 23, 30, 37, 40, 41, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 60, 61, 65, 68, 69, 70, 71, 94, 95, 96, 144, 186 role, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 42, 47, 52, 54, 56, 63, 64, 72, 87, 93, 94, 96, 99, 100, 106, 121, 122, 123, 125, 128, 130, 135, 144, 147, 150, 151, 162 Role Taking, 25 Royce, 50, 93, 181, 186

S secondary groups, 48, 58, 65 self, 2, 11, 14, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 37, 45, 46, 50, 51, 52, 58, 60, 62, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 81, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 105, 109, 112, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 125, 127, 131, 140, 141, 144, 145, 149, 150, 153, 158, 185 self-fulfilling prophecy, 116, 117, 118, 120 self-interest, 2, 68 Significant symbols, 4, 14, 69, 98 Simmel, 40, 49, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 140, 142, 187 Skinner, 52, 68, 70, 97 social behaviorism, 49, 68, 73, 76, 77, 81, 87, 98, 99

social constructionism, 158, 162 Social constructionism, 158 social experience, 60, 70, 73, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90, 91, 93, 96 social facilitation, 43 social intercourse, 20, 24, 27, 69, 91, 98, 122 social learning, 42, 48 Social Reality Construction, 157 social self, 27, 52, 62, 87 social structures, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 22, 23, 35, 38, 41, 45, 47, 55, 57, 58, 150, 152, 154, 155, 156, 163 social world, 14, 23, 27, 28, 32, 34, 41, 46, 47, 50, 54, 60, 63, 70, 72, 74, 89, 95, 98, 99, 101, 121, 133, 137, 141, 147, 157 socialization, 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 11, 14, 25, 32, 33, 36, 46, 72, 95, 99, 163 Society, 1, 5, 6, 8, 14, 22, 25, 26, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 99, 101, 147, 149, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185 Sociological Social Psychology, 29, 30, 180 Sociological Theory, 101, 115, 179, 184, 186, 187 Sociology, 2, 14, 31, 41, 47, 102, 106, 150, 153, 180, 186, 187 Solomon Asch, 32, 46 spiritual self, 52, 62 Stanley Milgram, 32, 46 Status, 47, 189 structural, 5, 10, 13, 15, 19, 22, 35, 36, 72, 150, 151, 152, 155, 164 structural determinism, 22 structuration, 154, 157 symbolic interactionism, 4, 9, 19, 20, 23, 24, 33, 34, 36, 42, 47, 48, 49, 50, 56, 61, 67, 70, 115, 118, 119, 121, 133, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 157 symbolic,, 93, 100 symbols, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, 14, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 45, 52, 69, 70, 72, 74, 77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 97, 98, 99, 147, 149, 150

194

Index

T The aggression-approval proposition, 142 The deprivation-satiation proposition, 143 the self, 1, 10, 11, 14, 21, 25, 29, 37, 50, 51, 52, 62, 70, 71, 80, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 99, 100, 109, 115, 117, 122, 127, 131, 147, 149, 150 The Social Construction of Reality, 12, 152, 180 The stimulus proposition, 142 The success proposition, 142 The value proposition, 143 theory of action, 36 theory of the duality of structure and agency, 12, 152 Though, 78, 87, 89, 92, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 109, 110 to the marginal utility theory, 143 transcendental ego., 128, 129 transcendental phenomenology, 127, 131

triads, 29, 58, 65, 179 typifications, 130

U Utilitarianism, 68, 97, 139, 140

V value, 10, 33, 47, 61, 65, 75, 118, 119, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147 Verstehen, 38 voluntarist, 6, 7, 8, 9, 15

W Wallace and Wolf, 9, 11, 14, 20, 21, 54, 67, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126 Watson, 52, 68, 70, 74, 76, 97 Weber, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 22, 37, 38, 40, 49, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 63, 64, 87, 118, 119