Symbolic Interactionism

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Symbolic Interactionism

• Sheldon Stryker

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Introduction

• Symbolic Interactionism are both a general
  framework for the analysis of society and a
  social psychological theory addressed to problems
  of socialization
• Theory vs. Frames of Reference
• - Theory
• (1) Is a set of logically related hypotheses
  specifying expected relationships among variables
• (2) Is based on concepts describing selected
  aspects of the world and assumptions about the
  way it works, and open to falsification through
  evidence drawn from the world
• (3) Incorporates the concepts provided by a
  frame of reference
• - Frame of reference
• (1) For sociologist, symbolic interactionism is
  a frame of reference or a perspective
• (2) It must give short shrift to some
  potentially significant determinants of social
  behavior by the very act of directing attention
  to its special concerns

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The Scottish Moral Philosophers

• Empiricism
• -philosophy is the science of the connecting
  principles of nature
• -empiricism and induction can lead to useful
  knowledge
• Communication
• -Sympathy is the source of human action
• -For Adam Smith, sympathy is a universal human
  trait, largely unlearned, which allows us to put
  ourselves in anothers place and to see the world
  through other persons eyes
• -It is through communicating with others that we
  first learn about ourselves

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William James(1842-1910)

• Habit
• -the basis of habit is memory
• -instincts are both modifiable and transitive
• The Self
• -is the sum total of all that an individual can
  call his
• -four types of selfthe material self the
  spiritual self the social self pure ego
• -the social self
• -is the recognition given one by others
  derivative of relationships with others
• -emphasizes on the selfs multifaceted
  character? multifaceted self as the product of
  heterogeneously organized society
• -ones self-worth/self-esteem is a function of
  the ratio of success to presentation
• ?two basis of self-esteem objective basisthe
  recognition one gets from others subjective
  basisones own aspirations

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James Mark Baldwin(1861-1934)

• Personality Development
• (1) Projective Stagebeing aware of others,
  drawing differences between them and objects
• (2) Subjective Stageemergence of
  self-consciousness through imitating the behavior
  of others and learning that there are feeling
  states associated with such behavior
• (3) Ejective Stageassociates feeling states
  with its conceptions of persons and becomes
  aware that other persons have feeling states
  just as it does

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John Dewey(1859 - 1952)

• Habit
• -personality organization is a primarily
  function of habit
• -social organization is a primarily function of
  custom
• -habits reflect a prior social order and they
  are the basis of thought and
• reflection
• Pragmatism
• -human is unique because of their capacity of
  thinking
• -mind is the process of thinking thinking
  arises in the process of humans adjusting to
  their environment
• -mind is instrumental and it is the process of
  defining objects in ones world
• The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology (1896)
• -a stimulus is defined in the context of action
  rather than prior to and a cause of that action

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Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929)

• Social Self
• (the reflected/looking glass self)
• -The self is a social product it is defined and
  developed in social action
• -Three components
• (1) Imagination of our appearance to other
  person
• (2) Imagination of other persons judgment to
  our
• appearance
• (3) Self-feeling from these imaginations

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W. I. Thomas(1863-1947)

• Basic Position
• -any human behavior needs to cope with the
  subjective and objective facts of experience
• -adjustment processes are responses to objective
  circumstances in which individuals and groups are
  embedded
• Definitions of the situation
• -subjective components of experience
• -"If men define situations as real, they are
  real in their consequences
• Methodology
• -personal documents (case studies, diaries,
  letters) studies
• -they provide the participant's definition of
  the situation that purely observation and
  statistical studies failed to do

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George Hebert Mead(1863-1931)

• Three traditions
• (1) Pragmatismindividuals create their own
  world
• (2) Behaviorismreinforcement
• (3) Darwinismhuman beings have conscious
  thoughts
• Evolutionary Principles
• -the best way to study human behavior is from
  the viewpoint that society is an ongoing process
• Social acts
• -Conversation of gestures
• -Significant symbols

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George Hebert Mead

• The Self
• -it is a product of social interaction
• -it is a social structure and it arises in
  social experience
• -it exists in the activity of viewing oneself
  reflexively
• -role-taking taking the standpoint of others
• - I and Me
• -Ithe responses of the person to the
  organized attitudes of others contains the
  creativity and spontaneity parts of the self
• -Meanticipating others responses on the
  basis of common participation in a
  communication process
• -three stages in developing the self play
  stage, game stage, generalized others

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George Simmel(1858-1918)

• Approach to Sociological Theory
• (1) Society
• -the name for a number of individuals,
  connected by interaction
• -a structure of positions (vocations)
• (2) Forms of social life
• -social process, social types, developmental
  patterns
• (3) Sociation
• -the interaction of minds, the conscious
  association of person
• -sociation requires individual to be
  generalized the individual must be more than
  or less than an individual personality to be a
  part of society

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Ralph Linton(1893-1953)

• Anthropological Methodology
• (1) societyany group of people who have lived
  and worked together long enough to get
  themselves organized and to think of themselves
  as a social unity with well-defined limits
• (2) ideal patternsremembered and rationalized
  experiences of adapting to the environment in
  which the society exists
• ?these guide the training of the members of
  society
• (3) statusthe polar positions in the ideal
  patterns it is a collection of rights and duties

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The Social Person

• Role
• -Status Position
• -Role Theory status and position refer to
  the parts of organized social groups
• -S.I. position refers to any socially
  recognized category of actors
• -Roleexpectations which are attached to
  positions
• -Actors categorize themselves and respond to
  themselves by naming, classifying, and defining
  who and what they are? to engage in such
  reflexive behavior is to have a self.

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The Social Person

• Self
• -the self is a product of social interaction
• -is phenomenological
• -is based on reflexive activity
• -has physical or biological location
• -Mead Ones self is the way one describes to
  himself his
• relationship to other in a social process.
• -Strykers concept of self
• -identity
• -identity saliencerefers to one possible,
  theoretically important way in which the self
  can be organized
• -Salience hierarchythe higher the identity in
  the hierarchy, the more likely that the
  identity will be invoked in a given or in many
  situations
• -commitmentcommitments are premised on
  identities

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The Social Person

• Role-Taking
• -the process of anticipating the responses of
  others with whom one is involved in social
  interaction
• -actors use the result of their role-taking to
  sustain, modify, and redirect their own behavior
• -is one way persons learn how others locate them
  and of others expectations for their behavior
• Socialization
• -the process by which the newcomer becomes
  incorporate into organized patterns of
  interaction
• -once a self has been formed through this
  interactive process it serves to modify
  subsequent experience

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Social Structure

• System
• -Anything that can be analyzed into a set of
  parts so that one part is in some way dependent
  on each of the remaining parts.
• -The self can be conceptualized as a set of
  discrete identities organized into a hierarchy
  of salience is to say that the self is a system
  composed of interrelated parts.
• -Social Interaction
• -Interactions can be short (two persons say
  hello to another) or long (the relationships
  between doctor and patient, parent and child)
• -Longer interactions develop expectations with
  respect to the properties that are be observed
  in the interactions

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Social Structure

• System
• -Group
• -Networks of interaction with a high degree of
  closure
• -It is structured by both cooperative and
  conflictful interactions
• -Groups are systems of interpersonal
  relationships which tend to be normatively
  defined, or to contain normative elements
• -Groups are structures of differentiated
  relationships they are structures of positions
  and roles
• -Groups is formed of people sharing some
  structural characteristic (age, class,
  ethnicityetc.)
• -Scheduling
• -One of the social mechanisms to isolate groups
  from one another or to guarantee that contact
  will happen

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Social Structure

• Role Conflict
• -It happens when there are incompatible
  expectations that attach to some position in a
  social relationship
• -It may be intrarole or interrlole
• -Resolution of role conflict withdrawal from
  the relationship that are the source of conflict
  scheduling and allocation of different
  relationships and activities to different time
  slots

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Social Structure

• Role Constrain
• -It is caused by the problem of maintaining
  continuity
• -It can be defined as a felt difficulty in
  filling role obligations
• -Mechanism to reduce role strain elimination of
  some role relationships establish interactional
  role bargains that minimize costs
• -Role-set