Microinteractionism

1
Micro-interactionism

• The legacy of
• Pragmatism

2
Cardinal numbers of Guaraní (language of
indigenous Paraguayans)

• 11 patei12 pakõi13 pahapy14 15 papo16
  
• 17 papokõi18 papohapy19 paporundy20
  mokõipa

• 1 petei2 mokõi3 mbohapy4 irundy5 po6
  potei7 8 pohapy9 porundy10 pa

Can you fill in the blanks?
3
From structure to agency

• structuralists
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
• -Linguistic
• Unlocked the code of ancient languages
• Claude Lévi-Strauss (born 1908)
• -Anthropology
• Found hidden patterns of diverse myths

4
Emergence of structuralism in sociology

• Karl Marx
• People make their own history, but they do
  not make it just as they please they do not make
  it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but
  under circumstances directly found, given and
  transmitted from the past.
• (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,
  1852)
• Adolescent Karl But mom, I want to be an
  individual! Just like everybody else!

5
Structure vs. Agency

• What do YOU think?
• Are our actions constrained by limits set in
  place by others so much so that our path in life
  is narrow and predictable?
• Or
• Do we have the ability to navigate the barriers
  in our way so that we can forge our own path?
• What might microinteractionists think?

6
Thought exercise

• Consider a maze
• What are your options?
• What are your limitations?

7
How does structure confine, limit, and determine
our fate?

• Concrete barriers
• vs.
• Path of least resistance
• Question Who creates the structure?
• -What might microinteractionists think?

8
The legacy of Pragmatism

• truth is determined by the practical
  consequences of our actions
• Challenges the idea that objects and ideas have
  fixed meanings
• Explains how humans use symbols to communicate
  and interact
• Identifies the existence of multiple social selves

9
Charles Sanders Pierce

• Born 1839, died 1914
• Mathematician, scientist, philosopher
• Things are true because we believe them to be
  true.
• The meaning of objects and actions are not fixed
  a priori (in Latin, from the former)

10
Thought exercise

• A chair
• What is this thing? How do you know?
• Does it mean the same thing to everyone? How
  about a carpenter, a weary traveler, a cowboy in
  a bar fight?

11
What a pragmatist might say

• The objective reality, the fixed meaning of a
  chair, depends on the practical consequences of
  chairs in everyday life.
• Chairs are for sitting, until the day when people
  know longer sit in them at that point, their
  meaning changes.
• If meanings were fixed and unchanging, this
  wouldnt happen.

12
Use of symbols

• We can only communicate via symbols.
• Communication, therefore, is the use of signs and
  symbols between people
• (semiotics study of signs and symbols).
• Who determines meaning? Us. Humans.

13
Pragmatists and symbols

• Symbols only make sense in relation to other
  symbols (just like words only make sense in
  relation to other words).
• A chair means what it does because we agree that
  it does. In a sociological sense, it not only
  takes two to tango, it takes two to make meaning.
  
• The symbol of a chair only makes sense in
  relation to other symbols that represent things
  and actions, such as to sit and furniture.

14
Pragmatists and meaning

• If symbols only make sense in relation to other
  symbols, then our social actions only make sense
  in relation to the actions of others.
• We determine what actions to take by predicting
  and anticipating how others will respond.
• The meaning of our own actions is therefore
  partly determined by how others react to us.

15
Charles Horton Cooley

• Born 1864, died 1929
• Most famous idea
• looking glass self
• How do you see yourself through eyes of others?
• Thought exercise picking out your clothes in the
  morning

16
William James

• Born 1842, died 1910
• Offered a theoretical bridge
• between Idealism and Pragmatism
• Argued for the existence of multiple social
  selves
• -All guided by a unitary self (soul)
• Thought exercise your social self in your
  parents home vs a campus party.

17
George Herbert Mead

• Born 1863, died 1931
• Published little, but his ideas were very
  influential (basis of Blumers symbolic
  interactionism).
• Contribution the social mind
• Role of games
• The generalized other
• The me and I of the self

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Generalized other

• We account for the generalized other in our own
  thoughts and actions.
• Allows us to interact socially even when we are
  thinking by ourselves.
• Awareness of others helps us make sense of our
  own identity (because our own self only makes
  sense in relation to that of others).

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How can pragmatism help us understand the tension
between structure and agency?

• In order to understand why people do what they
  do, we need to have an idea of how they make
  decisions and what guides their actions (i.e.,
  why do they navigate the structure the way they
  do?).

20
Phenomenology

• The study of phenomena. More specifically, the
  study of how people subjectively interpret,
  experience, and assign meaning to phenomena.

21
Phenomenology cont.

• Lightning bolt exercise
• How can it be interpreted objectively and
  subjectively?
• meteorologist vs. cave dweller

22
Alfred Schutz

• Born 1899, died 1959
• Part time banker
• Influenced by Webers concept
• of verstehen
• Our understanding of the social world is
  subjective
• Signs, symbols, and gestures do not have a
  universal meaning

23
Webers woodcutter

• You see a person chopping wood in the distance
• What are they thinking?
• What are they trying to accomplish?
• What is their motive?

24
Subjective understanding

• What are the clues you use to better understand
  the woodcutter?
• Put yourself in their position (take their role)
• Interpret contextual clues (signs, symbols, and
  gestures)
• Superimpose your own experiences and motivations.

25
Limits of subjective understanding

• The subjective meaning that the interpreter does
  grasp is at best an approximation to the
  sign-users intended meaning, but never that
  meaning itself, for ones knowledge of another
  persons perspective is always necessarily
  limited. For exactly the same reason, the person
  who expresses himself in signs is never quite
  sure of how they are being understood (p.37).

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How can phenomenology help us understand the
tension between structure and agency?

• If the meaning of signs, symbols, and gestures
  can vary within a given structure depending on
  the context, then the way we act towards them may
  also change.
• Question under what conditions might we expect
  individuals to exercise their agency differently
  within the same structure?
• Ex university registrar

27
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman

• Published in 1966
• Made famous the (now ubiquitous)
• term social construction
• Their theory answers the question where did our
  social reality come from? Who made the structure
  we now navigate?
• their answer us!

28
Social Construction of Institutions

• Begin as merely habitualized actions among
  people
• Patterned actions are first taken-for-granted
  until they eventually harden and thicken
  (p.47)

29
Social Construction of Institutions cont.

• Interaction rules that serve as the basis of
  institutions were originally a conscious
  agreement among actors. However, over time,
  people do not question their origin.
• Since they had no part in shaping it, it
  confronts them as a given reality that , like
  nature, is opaque in places at least (p.46-7).
• With age, institutions become more rigid and
  inflexibility
• it becomes real in an ever more massive way and
  it can no longer be changed so readily (p.46).

30
Thomas theorem

• "If humans define situations as real, they are
  real in their consequences.
• William I. Thomas The child in America Behavior
  problems and programs. (1928)
• Question Have you ever witnessed the social
  construction of an institution? If so, what have
  been the real consequences for people who
  conform/deviate from the institution?

31
Herbert Blumer

• Born 1900, died 1987
• Played professional football
• with now defunct Chicago Cardinals
• Pupil of George H. Mead
• Coined the term Symbolic Interactionism and
  characterized the theory as a summary of Meads
  ideas

32
Symbolic Interactionism

• "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 others."
• "These meanings are handled in, and modified
  through, an interpretive process used by the
  person in dealing with the things he/she
  encounters."

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Why is Blumer important?

• Symbolic interactionism gives sociologists a
  framework for understanding why people navigate
  the prevailing social structure the way we do.
• When people are given two, seemingly, equal
  choices, why pick one over the other?
• It depends on how THEY interpret the options in
  front of them. We need to see the world through
  THEIR eyes, instead of imposing our own ideas
  upon them.

34
Blumers methodological position

• Quantitative vs. Qualitative research
• Which might Blumer prefer? Why?

35
Respect the empirical world

• If the scholar wishes to understand the action
  of people it is necessary for him to see their
  objects as they see them. Failure to see their
  objects as they see them, or a substitution of
  his meanings of the objects for their meanings,
  is the gravest kind of error that the social
  scientist can commit (p.69).

36
Erving Goffman

• Born 1922, died 1982
• Studied under Everett Hughes at
• Chicago
• (a colleague of Blumer)
• Most famous contribution dramaturgy
• Argued for a renewed focus back on the influence
  of structure on everyday interactions.

37
Dramaturgy

• Ordinary social intercourse is itself put
  together as a scene is put together, by the
  exchange of dramatically inflated actions,
  counter-actions, and terminating replies.
  Scripts even in the hands of unpracticed players
  can come to life because life itself is a
  dramatically enacted thing. All the world is
  not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in
  which it isnt are not easy to specify (p. 64).

38
Dramaturgy cont.

• Front stage
• Back stage
• Parking lots and cloak rooms
• Authentic vs Cynical presentations of self

39
Onion or artichoke

• According to Goffman, is their a true self?
• Is there a director behind the scenes instructing
  all the actors?
• Or
• Are there as many selves as there are stages?