Relevance: Sociology: Paper I
The symbolic interactionist perspective views social meaning as arising through the process of social interaction. Contemporary symbolic interactionism rests on three basic premises:
- Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that they attach to Them.
- These meanings are derived from, or arise out of, social interaction with others.
- These meanings may be changed or modified through the processes of interaction and interpretation.
Symbols in Everyday Life. Without symbols, our social life would be no more sophisticated than that of animals. For example, without symbols we would have no aunts or uncles, employers or teachers—or even brothers and sisters. This sounds strange, but it is symbols that define our relationships. There would still be reproduction, of course, but no symbols to tell us how we are related to whom. We would not know to whom we owe respect and obligations, or from whom we can expect privileges—the essence of human relationships.
- Look at it like this: If you think of someone as your aunt or uncle, you behave one way, but if you think of that person as a boyfriend or girlfriend, you behave quite differently. It is the symbol that tells you how you are related to others—and how you should act toward them.
- Let’s make this a little less abstract. Consider this example:
Suppose that you have fallen head over heels in love. Finally, after what seems forever, it is the night before your wedding. As you are contemplating tomorrow’s bliss, your mother comes to you in tears. Sobbing, she tells you that she had a child before she married your father, a child that she gave up for adoption. Breaking down, she says that she has just discovered that the person you are going to marry is this child.
You can see how the symbol will change overnight—and your behavior, too! It is not only relationships that depend on symbols to exist, but even society itself. Without symbols, we could not coordinate our actions with those of others. We could not make plans for a future day, time, and place. Unable to specify times, materials, sizes, or goals, we could not build bridges and highways. Without symbols, there would be no movies or musical instruments. We would have no hospitals, no government, no religion.
- Proponents of this perspective, often referred to as the interactionist perspective, engage in microlevel analysis, which focuses on the day-to-day interactions of individuals and groups in specific social situations. Three major concepts important for understanding this theoretical approach include meaningful symbols, the definition of the situation, and the looking-glass self. In addition, two important types of theoretical analysis fit within the interactionist perspective: dramaturgical analysis and the labelling approach.
- Meaningful Symbols: George H. Mead (1863–1931) insisted that the ongoing process of social interaction and the creating, defining, and redefining of meaningful symbols make society possible. Meaningful symbols are sounds, objects, colors, and events that represent something other than themselves and are critical for understanding social interaction. Language is one of the most important and powerful meaningful symbols humans have created, because it allows us to communicate through the shared meaning of words.
- Definition of the Situation: Definition of the situation refers to the idea that “if [people] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas, 1928:572). Simply put, people define social reality through a process of give and- take interaction. Once a definition is established, it shapes all further interactions. For example, have you ever decided that you were “in love” with someone? If so, how did that change the way you interacted with that person? Conversely, what happens when a married couple decides they are no longer in love? If they define their marriage as meaningless or decide they have irreconcilable differences, how does that affect their relationship? Is a marriage likely to survive if both partners have defined it as “over”?
- The Looking-Glass Self : The looking-glass self refers to the idea that an individual’s self-concept is largely a reflection of how he or she is perceived by other members of society (Cooley, [1902] 1922). Society is used as a mirror to reflect a feeling of selfpride, self-doubt, self-worth, or self-loathing. These important elements of symbolic interactionism contribute to socialization and the process of becoming human as we establish our personal and social identities.
- Dramaturgical Analysis: A useful theoretical framework within symbolic interactionism, dramaturgical analysis, uses the analogy of the theatre to analyze social behavior. In this approach, people are viewed as actors occupying roles as they play out life’s drama. In real life, people do not passively accept others’ definitions of the situation nor the social identities assigned to them. Rather, they take an active part in the drama, manipulating the interaction to present themselves in the most positive light. Thus, people often use impression management to communicate favorable impressions of themselves (Goffman, 1959).
- The Labeling Approach: Another theoretical viewpoint within symbolic interactionism is the labeling approach, which contends that people attach various labels to certain behaviors, individuals, and groups that become part of their social identity and shape others’ attitudes about and responses to them. For example, in Outsiders, Howard Becker (1963) explored the fascinating world of jazz musicians and how their non-traditional music, penchant for marijuana, and open racial integration during the 1950s led mainstream Americans to label them “deviant.” The influence of the Chicago School and symbolic interactionism waned in the late 1950s, when a faction of sociologists argued that its approach was too dependent on ethnographic studies, personal observations, interviews, and subjective interpretations. Insisting that sociology must be more scientific, or at least, as Comte had envisioned, more positivistic, this group believed that sociology should rely more heavily on quantifiable data, facts, figures, and statistics. This led to the development of the Iowa School of symbolic interaction and also fueled a revival of structural functionalism.
Critique:
Interactionists have often been accused of examining human interaction in a vacuum. They have tended to focus on small-scale face to face interaction with little concern for its historical or social settings (Marxian Criticism).
They have concentrated on particular situations and encounters with little reference to the historical events which led up to them or the wider social framework in which they occur. Since these factors influence the particular interaction situation, the scant attention they have received has been regarded as a serious omission.
- While symbolic interactionism provides a corrective to the excesses of societal determinism, many critics have argued that it has gone too far in this direction. Though they claim that action is not determined by structural norms, interactionists do admit the presence of such norms. However, they tend to take them as given rather than explaining their origin.
- As William Skidmore comments, the interactionists largely fail to explain ‘why people consistently choose to act in given ways in certain situations, instead of in all the other ways they might possibly have acted’. In stressing the flexibility and freedom of human action the interactionists tend to downplay the constraints on action. In Skidmore’s view this is due to the fact that ‘interactionism consistently fails to give an account of social structure’. In other words it fails to adequately explain how standardized normative behaviour comes about and why members of society are motivated to act in terms of social norms.
- Similar criticism has been made with reference to what many see as the failure of interactionists to explain the source of the meanings to which they attach such importance. Critics argue that such meanings are not spontaneously created in interaction situations. Instead they are systematically generated by the social structure.
- Marxists have argued that the meanings which operate in face to face interaction situations are largely the product of class relationships. From this viewpoint, interactionists have failed to explain the most significant thing about meanings: the source of their origin.
- Interactionism is a distinctly American branch of sociology and to some this partly explains its shortcomings. Thus Leon Shaskolsky has argued that interactionism is largely a reflection of the cultural ideals of American society. He claims that ‘ interactionism has its roots deeply imbedded in the cultural environment of American life, and its interpretation of society is, in a sense, a “looking glass” image of what that society purports to be’. Thus the emphasis on liberty, freedom and individuality in interactionism can be seen in part as a reflection of America’s view of itself.