Slides for lecture on symbolic interactionism, microsociology, and phenomenology for FOAR 701 'Research Paradigms.'

1. Human society is to be seen as consisting
of acting people, and the life of the society
is to be seen as consisting of their actions.
The acting units may be separate
individuals, collectivities whose members
are acting together on a common quest, or
organizations acting on behalf of a
constituency… There is no empirically
observable activity in a human society that
does not spring from some acting unit. This
banal statement needs to be stressed in
light of the common practice of sociologists
of reducing human society to social units
that do not act – for example, social classes
in modern society. — Herbert Blumer (186-187)
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2. Nobody is always stupid, but
everyone is stupid sometimes.*
* attributed to George Herbert Mead
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3. FOAR701: Research paradigms (2016)
Interactionism: overview
3
Greg Downey
Department of Anthropology
Faculty of Arts
Macquarie University
greg.downey@mq.edu.au
Twitter: @gregdowney1

4. ‘social or cultural
constructivism’*
another variant (like cultural hermeneutics & structuralism)
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5. symbolic interactionism
microsociology
phenomenology
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6. Symbolic Interactionism and Pragmatism
• George Herbert Mead, William James, Charles Peirce,
and John Dewey.
• Development of the self through communication.
• Focus on social practice as determining social process
(institutions as the abstraction of process-based
patterns).
• Shares with phenomenology a focus on the ‘meaning’ of
objects & people as linked to their potential for
engagement (highlights the social learning involved).
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7. Why include phenomenology?
Phenomenology as a philosophical movement dedicated to understanding how
experience, concepts, or reality is achieved, generally through interaction.
Could be included, in variations, in many different paradigms (like feminism)…
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8. Society as
interaction
Experience + action.
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9. Action*
difference to psychodynamics, hermeneutics & structuralis
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10. Interaction (George Herbert Mead through Blumer)
• Symbolic interaction: requires interpretation of
meaning (intrasubjective understanding)
• Non-symbolic interaction: ‘conversation of gestures’;
non- or pre-interpretive.
Much of human interaction is non-symbolic.
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11. ‘Gesture’
• Part of a meaningful act.
• Symbolic interaction requires
interpretation of the whole of
which gestures are a part.
• ‘What is it that we are doing
here?’
Ongoing negotiation of the
‘frame’ of the gesture or the
interpretive situation.
• Goffman’s example: ‘the wink.’
• ‘Joint action’ is the chief
product of understanding.
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12. Meaning
Because meaning is always
vulnerable to reinterpretation,
situations and acts can change it.
Highlights instability and possibility
of change more than many
perspectives.
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13. ‘Intersubjectivity’
Inherent in any understanding is the
taking of each other’s roles.
‘Mutual role taking’ is necessary for
symbolic communication.
Helps us to understand the social
formation of self & negotiation of
social life.
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14. ‘Self’
• One acts towards one’s self, and from the position of, taking
one’s self as a certain kind of object: role-taking.
• At the same time, we know that, for SI, all meaning is learned
through interaction: so is the ‘self.’
Requires seeing one’s self ‘from the outside’ (inc. individuals,
groups & ‘generalised other’).
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15. “The self... is not an organic thing that
has a specific location, whose
fundamental fate is to be born, to
mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect
arising diffusely from a scene that is
presented.”
— Erving Goffman
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16. Self-engagement
Person is continually engaged with
one’s self during daily life as a
social interlocutor.
Social first, becomes internalised.
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17. “Choose your self presentation
carefully, for what starts out as a
mask may become your face.”
— Erving Goffman
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18. Implications:
• Institutions are ‘recurrent patterns of joint action’ (Blumer,
p. 17). Theorists misled into idea of ‘social order.’
‘They share common and pre-established meanings of what is expected in
the actions of the participants, and accordingly each participant is able to
guide his own behaviour by such meanings.’ (p. 17)
• Areas of unprescribed behaviour are also natural to social
life.
Even areas of recurrent joint action can be under pressure
and possible instability.
‘It is the social process in group life that creates and upholds the rules, not
the rules that create and uphold the group.’ (p. 19)
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19. Institutions
Networks of interlinked,
interdependent chains of actions.
De-reify institutions into the settings
in which they manifest.
‘Assemblage’ of roles &
expectations that is contingent.
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20. Example: prisons
Structural functionalist
Marxist
Post-structuralist
Interactionist
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21. Phenomenological link
• Stream of thinking on
embodiment (Merleau-Ponty,
feminists like I.M. Young, G.
Weiss).
• Motility: capacity for action that
underwrites perception.
• Blockage: felt experience of
incapacity (social exclusion).
• Variation as a critique of overly
universalist phenomenology.
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22. Rapid overview
game or market
super-organism
or system
theatre, game
modelling of
utility-driven
transactions
homeostasis or
role fulfilment
dynamic role
achievement,
frame shifts in
constant flow
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23. Rapid overview
interpretation is
contextualisation
destabilising
meaning
interpretation is
social act
culture as texts deconstruction meaning in action
linking of
references
critical stance
construction of
situations
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24. ‘Grounded theory’
Partial understandings or situated
forms of knowing & acting are the
goal.
Focus on qualitative work.
Very tightly confined project
description.
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25. Core of interactionist theory
• Epistemology: Radically localised, socially originated understanding of
truth.
Knowledge is always situated in play.
• Ontology: Focus on social determination and humanist interest in
meaningful, experiential world.
Phenomenology can reject access to unmediated reality.
• Methodology: Interpretive approach based on the a variety of
guiding metaphors (theatre, frame) and qualitative inquiry.
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26. Strengths of interactionist paradigm
• Associated with qualitative research including participant
observation.
• Strong focus on very local social phenomena; facilitates
research in wide variety of settings.
• Central role of joint action, so a positing of an irreducible
social level at a small scale (intermediate between individual
and societal scale).
• Balances a focus on social constraint (and other restraint) with
strong sense of social determinism (failed performances).
• Recognises the degree of self awareness of humans and how
this utterly alters the way that they interact.
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27. Prominent strains of interactionist thought
• Actor Network Theory: Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law (influence of post-
structuralism & Donna Harraway; note: Latour objects).
• Situational analysis & ‘grounded theory’:
• ‘Practice’ theory: Pierre Bourdieu, Loïc Wacquant (but note Marxist & post-structuralist,
even structuralist influences).
• Social psychology (social interactionism): Jean Piaget, Elizabeth Bates, Alison Gopnik,
Andrew Meltzoff, Catherine Snow, Anat Ninio.
• Education: Lev Vygotsky (socio-cultural interaction), Jerome Bruner, Bambi Schieffelen
(anthro), Elinor Ochs.
• Poststructuralism: Strong focus on ‘performativity’ in work by theorists like Judith Butler,
• Strong streams in sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, performance studies,
behavioural economics, practice-based studies (design, nursing, applied sociology,
medical practice).
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28. Criticism of interactionist approach
• Difficult to engage in macroscopic social analysis, so political
dimensions can be neglected. (social analysis ‘in a vacuum’)
• Unfalsifiable interpretive exercise (similar to psychoanalysis,
hermeneutics).
• Not really a paradigm so much as an analytical technique because it
eschews making causal claims.
• Within the school of thought, competing streams of qualitative and
quantitative analysis (behavioural observation can seem to drop the
focus on meaning).
• Also an internal debate over the guiding metaphors (dramaturgy, game,
negotiation).
• The origin of meanings can be unexplored.
• (Over time, a narrowing of paradigmatic difference through combination.)
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29. Thanks for your
attention!
Bibliography online at iLearn
Photos public domain at Pixabay
or as indicated.
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