Symbolic-interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is the prevailing micro-theoretical framework in sociological theory. As a micro-level perspective, symbolic interactionism focuses on patterns of individual interactions. Although sociologists working in this tradition recognize that larger social structures exist and are important in shaping our lives, they point out that society is actually created by people interacting together on a daily basis. It is these smaller interactions that actually make up the larger social structures that are of the focus of functionalists and conflict theorists. According to this perspective, society and these larger social structures must be understood through studying social interactions that are based on shared understandings, languages, and symbols.
A symbol is something that stands for, represents, or signifies something else in a particular culture. Symbols can be anything—gestures, words, objects, or events—and they can represent any number of others things, ideas, events, or emotions.
Symbolic interactionists argue that we are able to interact with others because we create symbols and learn to interpret what those symbols mean in our interactions. Thus, symbolic interactionism is sometimes referred to as interpretive theory. Social change occurs as people develop a shared understanding that a change needs to take place and interact to make that change happen. Symbolic interactionism is based partly on the writings of German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920). Unlike other sociologists who had focused only on large structural relationships, Weber was also interested in how individuals interact.
The aspect of his work that influenced the symbolic-interactionist perspective was his focus on how we interpret and understand the situations we encounter and the interactions in which we participate. To Weber, the concept of verstehen, or subjective understanding, was central to explaining human behavior. Weber felt that we have to be able to take someone else’s position mentally, to stand in their shoes, so to speak, to under- stand their actions. From our own perspectives, we may not understand why a person acts in a certain way, what that behavior means to them, or the purposes it serves for them.
Ex: we may only be able to explain why an abused wife stays with her violent husband by understanding the totality of her situation from her perspective—her emotional attachment to him, her economic situation, her religious views, and so on.
George Herbert Mead was a philosopher and social psychologist who was interested in how our personalities are formed through social interaction. The term symbolic interactionism was, however, not actually coined until a decade later. Herbert Blumer (1900–1987), a student of Mead, expanded on Mead’s concepts and introduced the term in 1937. More contemporary theorists expanded symbolic interactionism in new directions. Ex: labeling theory analyzes how we define deviance. Other perspectives that incorporate interpretative approaches to understanding social behaviors include the concept of the social construction of reality, Erving Goffman’s (1922–82) concept of dramaturgy, and Harold Garfinkel’s (1917–) work in ethnomethodology.