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Wallace & WOLF: CHAPTER 5 - SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
The term SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM originated with Herbert Blumer.
((INSERT BLUMER HERE))
GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
George Herbert Mead (1863 -- 1931) is associated with the Chicago school.
Most of his work was one reform issues in Chicago, in the urban setting.
He was interested in four basic areas of social life:
1. The self
2. Self-interaction
3. the development of the self
4, symbolic meaning
Mead Sol itself as an acting organism. It is not a passive receptacle
that simply receives and responds to stimuli. For Mead, the self is far
more than an internalization of components of social structure and
culture. It is more centrally a SOCIAL PROCESS, a process of self
interaction in which the human actor indicates matters that confront him
were in the situations in which they act. People organize their actions
through their interpretations in such situations. People engaged in this
social interaction with themselves according to me by taking the roles of
others and addressing themselves through these roles, and responding to
these approaches.
The self, then, is active and creative. There are no such ingredients as
social, cultural, or psychological variables that DETERMINE THE ACTIONS OF
THE SELF.
Functionalists tend to look human beings as passive agents impinged upon
by social and psychological forces. Remember, for example, the Twinkies
defense.
NOTE THAT CHART AT THE BOTTOM OF PAGE 197, where interaction is seen as a
process.
Mead developed away of looking at the self called the I and the me
The I refers to the impulsive acts, what Freud might call the ego,
or the spontaneous self. The ME is a set of organized attitudes of others
that we as soon and internalize. That is these are the perspectives of
ourselves that we learned from others. The ME guides are behavior of the
socialized person, and this aspect of the self brings the influence of
others into our consciousness. It is the I 10 allows for a certain degree
of innovation and creativity as well as a degree of freedom from
controlled by others.
SELF INTERACTION
for Mead, the concept of self interaction helps us make sense of our daily
experiences. The book gives the example of walking somewhere by herself
and thinking about things we remember talking to ourselves about. For
example we remind yourself to refrain from doing something, or we stopped
to make a phone call, or go to the library. The point is that we don't
have to think very hard about a situation in which we talked to ourselves
about how to approach a certain situation or whether to talk to others
were confronted others about it.
In these types of situations we are, in a sense, rehearsing for future
action. We do this by organizing ourselves in internal conversations,
which prepares us to take the role of others.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF
`
Mead outlines the three stages by which the self develops. These are
FIRST: THE PRE-PLAY STAGE
SECOND, THE GAME STAGE
THIRD, THE GENERALIZED OTHER STAGE.
One criticism of Mead is that the generalized other internalizes existing
power relationships, which means that people in power, for example males,
defined the generalized other. But this is misleading (explained)
SYMBOLIC MEANING
the meaning of SYMBOL for Mead comes from his definition of GESTURE. A
gesture is not only the first element of an act but also a sign for 80
whole act. For example, when a smoker reaches for a pack of cigarettes,
that gesture can be enough to prompt and non-smoker to leave the room, to
open windows, or to request that smoking be prohibited. Gestures just can
be internalized and provide significant symbols for meaning because they
have the same meanings for all individuals of a given society or social
group, that is favorite they arouse the same attitudes in the individuals
making them as they do in the individuals responding to them.
HERBERT BLUMER
(see handout/maines)
Erving Goffman
(see handout)
PATRICIA HILL COLLINS: BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHT
Collins attempts to captured the interconnections of race social class and
gender, based on the experiences of the African-American women.
She calls this interconnection of class race and gender the MATRIX OF
DOMINATION.
Part of what she tries to do is develop away to study this matrix, or what
she calls an epistemological framework that can be used both to study
black feminist thoughts and to clarify some of the underlying assumptions
that impede the development of black feminist thoughts.
Of course, her framework can be used to study other topics in which race
class and gender come together as well.
she tries to look at the nature and grounds of knowledge, especially with
reference to its limits and validity. She identifies four basic
dimensions:
first, concrete experiences as a criterion of meaning;
Second, the use of dialogue and assessing knowledge claims;
third the ethic of caring;
fourth, the ethic of personal accountability.
Like Goffman, Collins draws on a variety of sources including
autobiographies and novels to help illustrate her concepts.
Collins does not come from a single theoretical tradition. However our
authors say that she is obviously directed by Bloomer is three ASIC
promises of symbolic interactions: first people act on the basis of
meanings, second they discover meaning in interactions with others, and
third, they engage in the interpretive process in their daily encounters.
QUESTION: is this really different than conflict theory?
A
Collins rejects approaches to denomination that sees domination as simply
the additive products of a number of separate variables. For example as
wind gender relations are viewed as a basis for domination to which age,
sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, social class, and religion, are
simply added. Instead, she views relations of domination as a system of
interlocking categories, and her emphasis and refocus is on the
interconnections of these systems.
Unlike functionalists, Collins argues that in order to explain disorder in
chaos, scientists should develop new conceptual and methodological tools
to understand the complexities rather than attempt to reduce them.
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