Encyclopedia of Sociology Vol

dents who have been selected through a random procedure. For instance, a sample of sociologists might be chosen by taking every twentieth name from an alphabetical listing of all regular members of the American Sociological Association, though with the recognition that any such listing would be incomplete (e.g., not everyone with an advanced degree in sociology belongs to the association).

The major advantage of mail surveys is their relatively low cost, which is limited to payments to clerical employees, stamps, and perhaps financial incentive for the respondents. One disadvantage of mail surveys is that they traditionally have produced low response rates; many obtain only 25 percent or less of the target sample. However, Dillman (1978) argues that designing mail surveys in accordance with the principles of exchange theory can yield response rates at or close to those of other modes of administration. Whether this is true for a sample of the U.S. population remains in doubt for the reason given below, although Dillman has implemented some of his strategies in government census-type surveys. It is clear from numerous experiments that the use of two specific fea- tures—monetary incentives (not necessarily large) provided in advance and follow-up ‘‘reminders’’— can almost always improve mail questionnaire response rates appreciably. However, another important disadvantage of mail surveys in the United States is the absence of an available centralized national listing of households for drawing a sample; because of this situation, it is difficult to say what response rate could be obtained from a nongovernmental national mail sample in this country.

Mail surveys generally are used when there is a prior list available, such as an organization’s membership, and this practice may add the benefit of loyalty to the organization as a motive for respondent cooperation. Other disadvantages of mail surveys are lack of control over exactly who answers the questions (it may or may not be the target respondent, assuming there is a single target), the order in which the questionnaire is filled out, and the unavailability of an interviewer for respondents who cannot read well or do not understand the questions. One compensating factor is the greater privacy afforded respondents, which may lead to more candor, although evidence of this is still limited. Sometimes similar privacy is attempted an interview survey by giving a portion

of the questionnaire to respondents to fill out themselves and even providing a separate sealed envelope to mail back to the survey headquarters, thus guaranteeing that the interviewer will not read the answers. This strategy was used by Laumann et al. (1994) in a major national survey of sexual behavior, but no comparison with data obtained in a more completely private setting was provided. Tourangeau and Smith (1996) provide a different type of evidence by showing that respondents who answer directly into a computer appear more candid than do respondents who give answers to interviewers. Recently, the Internet has been investigated as a vehicle for self-administered surveys, although there are formidable problems of sampling in such cases.

Because of these difficulties, most surveys aimed at the general population employ interviewers to locate respondents and administer a questionnaire. Traditionally, this has been done on a face-to-face (sometimes called ‘‘personal’’) basis, with interviewers going to households, usually after a letter of introduction has been mailed describing the survey. The sample ordinarily is drawn by using ‘‘area probability’’ methods: To take a simple example, large units such as counties may be drawn first on a random basis, then from the selected counties smaller units such as blocks are drawn, and finally addresses on those blocks are listed by interviewers and a randomly drawn subset of the listed addresses is designated for the actual sample, with introductory letters being sent before interviewing is attempted. In practice, more than two levels would be used, and other technical steps involving ‘‘stratification’’ and ‘‘clustering’’ would be included to improve the efficiency of the sampling and data collection.

A major advantage of face-to-face interviewing is the ability of the interviewer to find the target respondent and persuade her or him to take part in the interview. Face-to-face interviewing has other advantages: Graphic aids can be used as part of a questionnaire, interviewers can make observations of a respondent’s ability to understand the questions and of other behavior or characteristics of a respondent, and unclear answers can be clarified. The major disadvantage of face-to-face interviewing is its cost, since much of the time of interviewers is spent locating respondents (many are not at home on a first or second visit). For every actual

hour spent interviewing, five to ten hours may be needed for travel and related effort. Furthermore, face-to-face surveys require a great deal of total field time, and when results are needed quickly, this is difficult to accomplish and may add more expense. Another disadvantage is the need for an extensive supervisory staff spread around the country, and yet another is that survey administrators must rely on the competence and integrity of interviewers, who are almost always on their own and unsupervised during interviews. This makes standardization of the interviewing difficult.

Increasingly since the early 1970s, face-to-face interviewing has been replaced by telephone interviewing, usually from a centralized location. Telephone surveys are considerably less expensive than face-to-face surveys, though the exact ratio is hard to estimate because they also are normally shorter, usually under forty-five minutes in length; the expense of locating people for face-to-face interviews leads to hourlong or even lengthier interviews, since these usually are tolerated more readily by respondents who are interviewed in person. Telephone surveys can be completed more rapidly than can face-to-face surveys and have the additional advantage of allowing more direct supervision and monitoring of interviewers. The incorporation of the computer directly into interviewing— known as computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI)—facilitates questionnaire formatting and postinterview coding, and this increases flexibility and shortens total survey time. Still another advantage of telephone surveys is the relative ease of probability sampling: Essentially random combinations of digits, ten at a time, can be created by computer to sample any telephone number in the United States (three-digit area code plus sevendigit number). There are a variety of practical problems to be overcome (e.g., many of the resulting numbers are nonworking, account must be taken of multiple phones per household, and answering machines and other devices often make it difficult to reach real people), but techniques have been developed that make such samples available and inexpensive to a degree that was never true of the area sampling required for face-to-face interviewing. Perhaps the largest problem confronting survey research is the proliferation of telemarketing, which makes many potential respondents wary of phone calls and reluctant to devote time to a survey interview.

Because speaking on the telephone seems so different from speaking face to face, survey methodologists initially thought that the results from the two types of survey administration might be very different. A number of experimental comparisons, however, have failed to find important differences, and those which do occur may have more to do with different constraints on sampling (telephone surveys obviously miss the approximately 8 percent of the American households without telephones and produce somewhat higher levels of refusal by the intended respondents). Thus, the remaining reasons for continuing face- to-face surveys have to do with the need for longer interviews and special additions such as graphic demonstrations and response scales. (Groves [1989] discusses evidence on telephone versus face-to- face survey differences, and Groves et al. [1988] present detailed accounts of methodological issues involving telephone surveys.)

Face-to-face and telephone surveys share one important feature: the intermediate role of the interviewer between the questionnaire and the respondent. Although this has many advantages, as was noted above, there is always the possibility that some behavior or characteristic of the interviewer will affect responses. For example, as first shown by Hyman (1954) in an effort to study the interview process, a visible interviewer characteristic such as racial appearance can have dramatic effects on answers. This is probably the largest of all the effects discovered, no doubt because of the salience and tension that racial identification produces in America, but the possibility of other complications from the interview process—and from the respondent’s assumption about the sponsorship or aim of the survey—must be borne in mind. This is especially true when surveys are attempted in societies in which the assumption of professional neutrality is less common than in the United States, and some recent failures by surveys to predict elections probably are due to bias of this type.

THE SEQUENCE OF A SURVEY

Surveys should begin with one or more research problems that determine both the content of the questionnaire and the design of the sample. The two types of decisions should go hand in hand,

since each affects the other. A questionnaire that is intended to focus on the attitudes of different ethnic and racial groups makes sense only if the population sampled and the design of the sample will yield enough members of each group to provide sufficient data for adequate analysis. In addition, decisions must be made early with regard to the mode of administration of the survey—whether it will be conducted through self-administration or interviewing and, if the latter, whether in person, by telephone, or in another way—since these choices also influence what can be asked. Each decision has its trade-offs in terms of quality, cost, and other important features of the research.

After these planning decisions, the development of the questionnaire, the pretesting, and the final field period take place. The resulting data from closed, or fixed-choice, questions can be entered directly in numerical form (e.g., 1 = yes, 2 = no, 3 = don’t know) into a computer file for analysis. If open-ended questions—questions that do not present fixed alternatives—are used and the respondents’ answers have been recorded in detail, an intermediate step is needed to code the answers into categories. For example, a question that asks the respondents to name the most important problems facing the country today might yield categories for ‘‘foreign affairs,’’ ‘‘inflation,’’ ‘‘racial problems,’’ and so forth, though the words used by the respondents ordinarily would be more concrete. Finally, the data are analyzed in the form of tables and statistical measures that can form the basis for a final report.

MODIFICATIONS AND EXTENSIONS OF

THE SURVEY METHOD

This discussion has concerned primarily the single cross-sectional or one-shot survey, but more informative designs are increasingly possible. The most obvious step now that surveys of the national population have been carried out for more than half a century is to study change over time by repeating the same questions at useful intervals. The General Social Survey (GSS) has replicated many attitude and factual questions on an annual or biennial basis since 1972, and the National Election Study (NES) has done the same thing in the political area on a biennial basis since the 1950s. From these repeated surveys, sociologists

have learned about substantial changes in some attitudes, while in other areas there has been virtually no change (see Niemi et al. [1989] and Page and Shapiro [1992] for examples of both change and stability). An important variant on such longitudinal research is the panel study, in which the same respondents are interviewed at two or more points in time. This has certain advantages; for example, even where there is no change for the total sample in the distribution of responses, there may be counterbalancing shifts that can be best studied in this way.

Surveys are increasingly being carried out on a cross-national basis, allowing comparisons across societies, though usually with the additional obstacle of translation to be overcome. Even within the framework of a single survey in one country, comparisons across different types of samples can be illuminating, for example, in an important early study by Stouffer (1955) that administered the same questionnaire to the general public and to a special sample of ‘‘community leaders’’ in order to compare their attitudes toward civil liberties. Finally, it is important to recognize that although the survey method often is seen as entirely distinct from or even opposite to the experimental method, the two have been usefully wedded in a number of ways. Much of what is known about variations in survey responses caused by the form, wording, and context of the questions has been obtained by means of split-ballot experiments, while attempts to study the effects of policy changes sometimes have involved embedding surveys of attitudes and behaviors within larger experimental designs.

ETHICAL AND OTHER PROBLEMS

As with other social science approaches to the empirical study of human beings, surveys raise important ethical issues. The success of survey sampling requires persuading individuals to donate their time to being interviewed, usually without compensation, and to trust that their answers will be treated confidentially and used for purposes they would consider worthwhile. A related issue is the extent to which respondents should be told in advance and in detail about the content and aims of a questionnaire (the issue of ‘‘informed consent’’), especially when this might discourage their willingness to answer questions or affect the

kinds of answers they give (Singer 1993). The purely professional or scientific goal of completing the survey thus can conflict with the responsibility of survey investigators to the people who make surveys possible: the respondents. These are difficult issues, and there probably is no simple overall solution. There is a need in each instance to take seriously wider ethical norms as well as professional or scientific goals.

From within sociology, reliance on surveys has been criticized on several grounds. Sociologists committed to more qualitative approaches to studying social interaction often view surveys as sacrificing richness of description and depth of understanding to obtain data amenable to quantitative analysis. Sociologists concerned with larger social structures sometimes regard the survey approach as focusing too much on the individual level, neglecting the network of relations and institutions of societies. Finally, some see the dependence of surveys on self-reporting as a limitation because of the presumed difference between what people say in interviews and how they behave outside the interview situation (Schuman and Johnson 1976). Although there are partial answers to all these criticisms, each has some merit, and those doing survey research need to maintain a self-critical stance toward their own approach. However, the survey is the best-developed and most systematic method sociologists have to gather data. Equally useful methods appropriate to other goals have yet to be developed.

Kalton, Graham 1983 Introduction to Survey Sampling. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.

Kish, Leslie 1965 Survey Sampling. New York: Wiley.

Laumann, Edward O., Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, and Stuart Michaels 1994 The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Niemi, Richard, John Mueller, and Tom W. Smith 1989

Trends in Public Opinion: A Compendium of Survey Data. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Page, Benjamin I., and Robert Y. Shapiro 1992 The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Payne, Stanley L. 1951. The Art of Asking Questions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Rosenberg, Morris 1968. The Logic of Survey Analysis. New York: Basic Books.

Rossi, Peter H., and Steven L. Nock, eds. 1982 Measuring Social Judgments: The Factorial Survey Approach. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.

Schuman, Howard, and Michael P. Johnson 1976 ‘‘Attitudes and Behavior.’’ Annual Review of Sociology, vol.

2. Palo Alto, Calif.: Annual Reviews.

———and Stanley Presser 1981 Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys: Experiments on Question Form, Wording, and Context. New York: Academic Press.

Schwarz, Norbert, and Seymour Sudman, eds. 1996

Answering Questions: Methodology for Determining Cognitive and Communicative Processes in Survey Research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Singer, Eleanor 1993 ‘‘Informed Consent in Surveys: A Review of the Empirical Literature.’’ Journal of Official Statistics. 9:361–375.

REFERENCES

Agresti, Alan, and Barbara Finlay 1997 Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Converse, Jean M. 1987 Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence, 1890–1960. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dillman, Don A. 1978 Mail and Telephone Surveys: The Total Design Method. New York: Wiley.

Groves, Robert M. 1989 Survey Errors and Survey Costs. New York: Wiley.

——— Paul P. Biemer, Lars E. Lyberg, James T. Massey, William L. Nicholls II, and Joseph Waksberg 1988

Telephone Survey Methodology. New York: Wiley.

Hyman, Herbert H. 1954 Interviewing in Social Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Stouffer, Samuel A. 1955 Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.

Sudman, Seymour, and Norman M. Bradburn 1987

Asking Questions: A Practical Guide to Question Design. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

———,———, and Norbert Schwarz 1996 Thinking About Answers: The Application of Cognitive Processes to Survey Methodology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Tourangeau, Roger, and Tom W. Smith 1996 ‘‘Asking Sensitive Questions: The Impact of Data Collection Mode, Question Format, and Question Content.’’

Public Opinion Quarterly 60:275–304.

Turner, Charles, and Elizabeth Martin, eds. 1984 Surveying Subjective Phenomena, 2 vols. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

HOWARD SCHUMAN

SYMBOLIC INTERACTION THEORY

The term ‘‘symbolic interactionism’’ was invented by Blumer (1937) to describe sociological and social psychological ideas he presented as emanating directly from Mead, especially but not exclusively in Mind, Self, and Society (1934). ‘‘Symbolic interaction theory’’ is a term that is related to those ideas, though not necessarily in the specific forms presented by Blumer or Mead.

FUNDAMENTAL IMAGERY

The fundamental character of symbolic interactionist ideas is suggested by the theoretical proposition that the self reflects society and organizes behavior and by related imagery that addresses the nature of society and the human being, the nature of human action and interaction, and the relationship between society and the person. That imagery begins with a vision of society as a web of communication: Society is interaction, the reciprocal influence of persons who, as they relate, take into account each other’s characteristics and actions, and interaction is communication. Interaction is ‘‘symbolic,’’ that is, conducted in terms of the meanings persons develop in the course of their interdependent conduct. The environment of human action and interaction is symbolically defined: It is the environment as it is interpreted that is the context, shaper, and object of action and interaction. Persons act with reference to one another in terms of symbols developed through interaction and act through the communication of those symbols. Society is a label aggregating and summarizing such interaction. Society does not ‘‘exist’’; it is created and continuously re-created as persons interact. Social reality is a flow of events joining two or more persons. More than simply being implicated in the social process, society and the person derive from that process: They take on their meanings as those meanings emerge in and through social interaction.

Neither society nor the individual is ontologically prior to the other in this imagery; persons create society through their interaction, but it is society, a web of communication and interaction, that creates persons as social beings. Society and the individual presuppose each other; neither exists except in relation to the other. This concep-

tion of society implicitly incorporates a view of the human being as ‘‘minded’’ and that ‘‘mindedness’’ as potentially reflexive. That is, people can and sometimes do take themselves as the object of their own reflection, thus creating selves, and do this from the standpoint of the others with whom they interact. Selves are inherently social products, although they involve more than reflected appraisals of others in the immediate situation of interaction; in particular, selves involve persons as subjects responding to themselves as objects. Thinking takes place as an internal conversation that uses symbols that develop in the social process. Mind arises in both the evolutionary and individual senses in response to problems (interruptions in the flow of activities) and involves formulating and selecting from symbolically defined alternative courses of action to resolve those problems. Choice is an omnipresent reality in the human condition, and the content of choices is contained in the subjective experience of persons as that experience develops in and through the social process.

Following from this imagery is a view of human beings, both collectively and individually, as active and creative rather than simply responsive to environmental stimuli. Since the environment of human action and interaction is symbolic; because the symbols attaching to persons (including oneself), things, and ideas are the products of interaction and reflexivity and can be altered and manipulated in the course of that interaction; since thought can be used to anticipate the effectiveness of alternative courses of action in resolving problems; and because choice among alternatives is an integral feature of social conduct, one arrives at an image of social interaction as literally constructed, although not necessarily anew in each instance, in the course of interaction. One also arrives at an image that entails a degree of indeterminacy in human behavior in the sense that the course and outcome of social interaction cannot as a matter of principle (not uncertain knowledge) be completely predicted from conditions and factors existing before that interaction.

THE SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST

FRAMEWORK

Labeling the ideas of symbolic interactionism a ‘‘theory’’ is misleading. If one distinguishes between a systematic set of interrelated proposi-

tions about how a segment of the world is organized and functions and assumptions about and conceptualizations of the parts of that segment, symbolic interactionism has more the character of the latter than the former. That is, it is more a theoretical framework than a theory per se. While features of the framework appear to militate against attempts to formulate systematic theory by using it as a base and various proponents deny that possibility, a few sociologists have employed the framework in efforts to elaborate specific theories (e.g., Heise 1979; Stryker 1980, forthcoming; Stryker and Serpe 1982; Rosenberg 1984; Thoits 1983; MacKinnon 1994; Burke 1991). It is not possible to review such specific theories nor characterize the research that derives from that framework here. (For extensive references to classic literature and research literature before 1985, see Stryker and Statham [1985]. For more recent research, see one of the texts written from a symbolic interactionist perspective, such as Hewitt [1997], or Symbolic Interaction, a journal sponsored by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and devoted to work emanating from the framework.)

In the work of some (e.g., Blumer 1969), symbolic interaction ‘‘theory’’ is intended to be a general sociological frame that is applicable to the intellectual problems of sociology as a discipline from the most micro to the most macro levels. In the work of others (e.g., Stryker 1980), it is a frame restricted in utility to issues of social psychology. The first position does not seem defensible, because any framework brings into special focus particular variables and leaves unattended—at least relatively—other variables and because the symbolic interaction framework highlights interaction, social actors related through interaction, and subjective variables ‘‘internal’’ to those actors. It thus neglects features of the sociological landscape relating to large-scale social systems—the state, the economy, the ‘‘world system,’’ demographic variables, and so forth—and does not easily pose sociological questions involving interrelationships among those features of large-scale social systems. This neglect has led to criticism of the symbolic interactionist framework as lacking the social structural concepts needed for the analysis of power and consequently as an ideological apology for the status quo (see Meltzer et al. 1975; Stryker 1980; Reynolds 1990). Although many (e.g., Maines 1977) deny the validity of this criticism, pointing to work

by Hall (1972) and others, the criticism may be justified if the claim is that symbolic interactionism is a general sociological framework; it is not valid if the more restricted claim for its utility is made. However, there remains concern about the adequacy of the framework for problems of a distinctively sociological social psychology that centers on the reciprocal relationships of social units and social persons. There also is concern about whether the framework admits of and provides readily for the articulation of sociological and social psychology concepts. These concerns arise from the ways in which social structural concepts enter, or fail to enter, the symbolic interactionist frame (for presentations of an avowedly social structural version of the framework, see Stryker 1980, forthcoming). Whatever the intended coverage—from all of sociology to a limited social psychology—the framework traditionally has been conceived as knowing no cultural boundaries; that view, however, has been questioned (Hewitt 1990).

CENTRAL CONCEPTS

Implicated in the description of symbolic interactionist imagery provided above are many of the central concepts of the framework. The meaning of ‘‘meaning’’ is fundamental. By definition, social acts involve at least two persons taking each other into account in satisfying impulses or resolving problems. Since social acts occur over time, gestures—parts of an act that indicate that other parts are still to come—can appear. Vocal sounds, physical movements, bodily expressions, clothing, and so forth, can serve as gestures. When they do, they have meaning: Their meaning lies in the behavior that follows their appearance. Gestures that have the same meaning (implying the same future behavior) to those who make them and those who perceive them are significant symbols.

Things, ideas, and relationships among things and ideas can all be symbolized and enter the experience of human beings as objects; objects whose meanings are anchored in and emerge from social interaction constitute social reality. Although meanings are unlikely to be identical among participants, communication and social interaction presuppose significant symbols that allow meanings to be ‘‘sufficiently’’ shared. Because significant symbols anticipate future behavior, they entail plans of action: They organize behavior with

reference to what they symbolize. In the context of the ongoing social process, meanings must be at least tentatively assigned to features of the interactive situations in which persons find themselves; without the assignment of meanings, behavior in those situations is likely to be disorganized or random. The situation must be symbolized, as must its constituent parts; it must be defined or interpreted, and the products of that symbolization process are definitions of the situation. Those definitions focus attention on what is pertinent (satisfying impulses or resolving problems) in an interactive setting and permit a preliminary organization of actions appropriate to the setting. Tentative definitions are tested and may be reformulated through ongoing experience.

From the point of view of the actors involved, the most important aspects of a situation requiring definition are who or what they are in the situation and who or what the others with whom they interact are. Defining the others in the situation typically is accomplished by locating them as members of a socially recognized category of actors, one (or more) of the kinds of persons it is possible to be in a society (e.g., male or female, young or old, employed or unemployed). Doing this provides cues to or predictors of their behavior and permits the organization of one’s own behavior with reference to them. When others are recognized as instantiations of a social category, behaviors are expected of them and actions that are premised on those expectations can be organized and directed toward them. Through this process, the introduction of early definitions of the situation can produce, although not inevitably, behavior that validates the definitions. This is an insight that underlies the notion of altercasting (Weinstein and Deutschberger 1963) and appears in the development of expectation states theory (Berger et al. 1974). When such behavior becomes routinized and organized, it also can serve to reproduce the existing social structure.

While some interactionists disdain the term, expectations attached to social categories—again, the kinds of persons it is possible to be in a society—are roles. Situations frequently allow one to locate others in multiple categories and open the possibility that conflicting expectations will come into play; in this circumstance, no clear means of organizing responses may be available. Defining oneself in a situation also involves locat-

ing oneself in socially recognized categories; to respond reflexively to oneself by classifying, naming, and defining who and what one is is to have a self. The self, conceived in this manner, involves viewing oneself as an object. The meaning of self, like that of any object, derives from interaction: To have a self is to view oneself from the standpoint of those with whom one interacts. The self, like any significant symbol, provides a plan of action. By definition, that plan implicates the expected responses of others.

People learn, at least provisionally, what they can expect from others through role taking, a process of anticipating the responses of the others with whom one interacts. In effect, one puts oneself in the place of those people to see the world as they do, using prior experience with them, knowledge of the social categories in which they are located, and symbolic cues available in interaction. On such bases, tentative definitions of others’ attitudes are formulated and then validated or reshaped in interaction. Role taking permits one to anticipate the consequences of one’s own and others’ plans of action, monitor the results of those plans as they are carried out behaviorally, and sustain or redirect one’s behavior on the basis of the monitoring. Because roles often lack consistency and concreteness while actors must organize their behavior as if roles were unequivocal, interaction is also a matter of role making: creating and modifying roles by devising performances in response to roles imputed to others (Turner 1962).

Many social acts take place within organized systems of action; consequently, both role taking and role making can occur with reference to a generalized other, that is, a differentiated but interrelated set of others (Mead’s example involves baseball players anticipating the responses of other members of their team and those of their opponents). Not all others’ perspectives are equally relevant to an actor; the concept of significant other indicates that some persons will be given greater weight when perspectives differ or are incompatible. It is implied here that meanings are not likely to be universally shared or shared in detail; if they are not, accuracy in role taking and difficulty in role making also will vary. It also is implied that smooth and cooperative interpersonal relations do not necessarily follow from accurate role taking: Conflict may result from or be sharpened by such accuracy.

The symbolic interactionist ideas reviewed here have a history. Many issue directly from Mead. Mead’s ideas are part of a tradition of philosophical thought with roots in the Scottish moral philosophers Adam Smith, David Hume, Adam Ferguson, and Francis Hutcheson and, more proximately, in the American pragmatists Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. They also contain important admixtures of evolutionary and dialectic premises. Mead’s thought overlaps considerably with that of a number of sociologists who also wrote in the first decades of the twentieth century, in particular Charles Horton Cooley and William Isaac Thomas. Cooley’s axiom that society and the person are two sides of the same coin (the coin, he added, is communication) and that of Thomas asserting that if humans define situations as real, the situations are real in their consequences, capture much of the essence of symbolic interactionism. A host of sociologists connect that past with the present; among others, Burgess, Blumer, Waller, Sutherland, Hughes, Shibutani, Kuhn, Cottrell, Hill, Lemert, Lindesmith, Mills, Miyamoto, and Stone are linked to a more contemporary set of persons that includes Goffman, Lofland, Becker, Lopata, Strauss, Geer, Weinstein, Farberman, Couch, Denzin, Bart, Maines, Reynolds, Turner, Daniels, Scheff, Wiseman, Heise, Stryker, Burke, Heiss, Fine, Hochschild, Weigert, McCall, Snow, and Hewitt. (For reviews of the history and literature of symbolic interactionism, see Stryker and Statham 1985; Meltzer et al. 1975; Reynolds 1990; Lewis and Smith 1980.) The presence of these researchers in a common listing does not indicate their adherence to a common credo; there may beas much conceptual difference as similarity among them.

COMMONALITIES AND VARIATIONS

Thus, no single version of symbolic interaction theory satisfies all who find its core ideas appealing and useful in conducting research and analyses. There appear to be three fundamental premises of a symbolic interactionist perspective that are shared by those who acknowledge their intellectual roots in this tradition of sociological thought (Stryker 1988). The first holds that an adequate account of human social behavior must incorporate the perspective of participants in interaction and cannot rest entirely on the perspective of the observer. The second is that the self, that is, persons’ reflex-

ive responses to themselves, links the larger social organization or structure to the social interaction of those persons. The third asserts that processes of social interaction are prior to both self and social organization, both of which derive and emerge from social interaction.

Each of these premises leaves open issues of considerable importance with respect to the content, methods, and objectives of interactionist analyses on which symbolic interactionists can differ. Some sociologists for whom the three core premises serve as a starting point believe that social life is so fluid that it can be described only in process terms, that concepts purportedly describing social structures or social organization belie the reality of social life. Relatedly, some believe that actors’ definitions, which theoretically are central and powerful as generators of lines of action, are reformulated continuously in immediate situations of interaction, making it impossible to use preexistent concepts to analyze social life (Blumer 1969). Others accept the ‘‘reality’’ of social structural phenomena, viewing the social structure as relatively stable patternings of social interaction that operate as significant constraints on actors’ definitions. Social structure is thought to make for sufficient continuity in definitions to allow the use of concepts derived from past analyses of social interaction in the analysis of present and future interaction (Stryker 1980). The first premise hides, in the term ‘‘account,’’ the important difference between those who seem to believe that given the constructed character of social behavior, only an ‘‘after the fact’’ understanding of past events is possible (Weigert 1981) and those who believe that sociology can build testable predictive explanations of social behavior (Kuhn 1964). Similarly, some argue that the perspective of a sociological observer of human social behavior is likely to distort accounts of that behavior andso must be abjured in seeking to capture the perspectives of those who live the behavior that is observed (Denzin 1970), and others argue directly or by implication that the requirement that accounts incorporate the perspective of the actors whose behavior is observed dictates only that actors’ definitions be included in developed explanations, not that they constitute those explanations (Burke 1991). The first group tends to argue that the best, if not the only ‘‘legitimate,’’ methods are naturalistic, primarily observational (Becker and Geer 1957); the

second group tends to be catholic with respect to methods, refusing to rule out categorically any of the full range of possible social science methods and techniques (Heise 1979).

With respect to the second premise, interactionists differ in the degree to which they assign an independent ‘‘causal’’ role to the self as the link between social organization or structure and social behavior. For many, self can and does serve as an independent source of that behavior (McCall and Simmons 1978). For others, social organization or structure (as the residue of prior interaction) builds selves in its image, thus making the self essentially a conduit through which these structures shape behavior, not an independent source of that behavior (Goffman 1959). Similarly, there is variation among symbolic interactionists in the degree to which the self is seen as the source of creativity and novelty in social life, the degree to which creativity and novelty in social life are seen as probable as opposed to simply possible (occurring only under a specific and limited set of social circumstances), and the degree to which social life is constructed anew rather than ‘‘merely’’ reconstructed in the image of prior patterns (Turner 1962; Hewitt 1997; Stryker and Statham 1985).

The third premise is interpreted by some as denying that social organization and selves have sufficient constancy to permit generalized conceptualization or the development of useful a priori theory on the basis of any investigation that can carry over reasonably to any new investigation (Glaser and Strauss 1967). In the view of others, this premise does not deny that there is in social life a reasonable constancy that implies a sufficient constancy in both selves and social organization to permit the elaboration of useful theories employing general concepts that potentially are applicable to wide instances of social behaviors (Heise 1986). Some emphasize the behavioristic elements in their intellectual heritage from Mead, concentrating on how concerted lines of social action are constructed (Couch et al. 1986; McPhail and Wohlstein 1986), while others adopt a stance that attends primarily to the phenomenological worlds of the actors (or interactors) they study (Denzin 1984).

Clearly, these possibilities for important variations in symbolic interactionist thought are not independent of one another: Those who subscribe to a view emphasizing the fluidity of social life and

the moment-to-moment situated character of definitions also are likely to emphasize the degree to which social order continuously emerges from fluid process, the self organizes social behavior in an unconstrained fashion, and creativity and novelty characterize human behavior. They also tend to insist that the point of view of the observer contaminates reasonable accounts of social interaction, that there is little utility in an analysis of conceptualizations and theory emanating from earlier analyses, and that understanding, not explanation, is the point of sociological efforts.

The set of views presented in the preceding paragraph identifies symbolic interactionism for many of its most passionate adherents and perhaps for a majority of its critics. Those approaching their work from symbolic interactionism so defined tended to present what they did in both conceptual and methodological opposition to available alternatives in sociology. For example, Blumer (1969) devoted much of his career to championing direct and participant observation aimed at accessing the interpretations of those whose ongoing interaction sociologists sought to understand as opposed to both statistical and structural analyses, whose categories, data, and mathematical manipulations seemed to him devoid of actors’ meanings. Critics of symbolic interactionism attacked it and its adherents for being nonscientific and asociological. To circumscribe symbolic interactionism in the manner of these adherents and critics belies the diversity in views on key issues represented in the work of those who use the framework.

CONTEMPORARY VITALITY

Interest in the symbolic interactionist framework within sociology has fluctuated. That interest was great from 1920 to 1950, reflecting in part the dominance of the University of Chicago in producing sociologists as well as the institutional structure of sociology. Through the 1950s and into the 1970s, interest waned, first as the structural functionalism of Parsons and Merton gained ascendance intellectually and Harvard and Columbia became institutionally dominant and later as Marxist and structuralist emphases on macro social processes swept the field. Symbolic interactionism, when not decried as reactionary or asociological, became the loyal opposition (Mullins 1973). Indeed, Mullins

predicted that it would disappear as a viable sociological framework.

More recent events contradict that prediction: Symbolic interaction’ has had a remarkable revitalization in the past three decades (Stryker 1987), and there has been a corresponding resurgence of interest in the framework. The revitalization and resurgent interest reflect various sources. One is an emerging realization among sociologists with a structural orientation that their theories could benefit from the sociologically sophisticated theory of the social actor and action that symbolic interactionism can provide and the related increasing interest in linking micro to macro social processes. A second lies in a series of changing emphases in the work of contemporary symbolic interactionists. Although much recent work in a symbolic interactionist framework reflects traditional conceptual, theoretical, and methodological themes, on the conceptual level, newer work tends to adopt a ‘‘multiple selves’’ perspective, drawing on William James (Stryker 1989; McCall and Simmons 1978) rather than viewing the self as singular or unitary. Theoretically, there is greater attention to emotion, to affective dimensions of social life (Hochschild 1979; Thoits 1989; MacKinnon 1994; Ervin and Stryker, forthcoming), correcting for a ‘‘cognitive bias’’ in the framework; there is also greater appreciation for structural facilitators of and constraints on interaction and on self processes. While not yet prominent in contemporary interactionism, the groundwork has been laid (e.g., in Stryker and Statham 1985) for the reintroduction of the concept of habit, which was central in the writings of John Dewey and other forerunners of interactionism, in recognition that social life is not invariablyreflexive and minded. Current symbolic interactionism is methodologically eclectic and tends to be more rigorous than it was in the past, whether the methods are ethnographic (Corsaro 1985) or involve structural equation modeling (Serpe 1987). Also contributing to the revitalization of symbolic interactionism is the attention to its ideas, often unacknowledged but sometimes recognized, paid by a psychological social psychology that is predominately cognitive in its orientation. For cognitive social psychology, concepts are mental or subjective structures formed through experience, and these structures affect recognizing, attending, storage, recall, and utilization of information impinging on the person; of prime significance

among concepts functioning in these ways are selfconcepts. The link thus forged between cognitive social psychology and symbolic interactionism is mutually advantageous. Symbolic interactionism benefits from the ‘‘legitimacy’’ implicit in the attention given to its ideas and from the expanded pool of researchers focusing on those ideas; cognitive social psychology can benefit from understanding that cognitions are rooted in social structures and processes.

(SEE ALSO: Identity Theory; Role Theory; Self-Concept; Social

Psychology)

REFERENCES

Becker, Howard S., and Blanche Geer 1957 ‘‘Participant Observation and Interviewing: A Comparison.’’Human Organization 16:28–32.

Berger, Joseph, Thomas L. Connor, and M. Hamit Fisek, eds. 1974 Expectation States Theory: A Theoretical Research Program. Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop.

Blumer, Herbert 1937 ‘‘Social Psychology.’’ In Emerson P. Schmidt, ed., Man and Society. New York: Pren- tice-Hall.

——— 1969 Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Burke, Peter J. 1991. ‘‘Attitudes, Behavior, and the Self.’’ In Judith A. Howard and Peter L. Callero, eds.,

The Self-Society Dynamic. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Corsaro, William A. 1985 Friendship and Peer Culture in the Early Years. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.

Couch, Carl J., Stanley L. Saxon, and Michael A. Katovich 1986 Studies in Symbolic Interaction: The Iowa School, 2 vols. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.

Denzin, Norman K. 1984 On Understanding Emotion. San Francisco: Josey Bass.

——— 1970 The Research Act. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Ervin, Laurie, and Sheldon Stryker forthcoming. ‘‘SelfEsteem and Identity.’’ In Timothy J. Owens, Sheldon Stryker, and Norman Goodman, eds., Extending SelfEsteem Theory and Research: Sociological and Psychological Currents. New York: Cambridge University Press.

——— 1984 ‘‘Toward a Phenomenology of Domestic Family Violence.’’ American Journal of Sociology 3:483–513.

Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss 1967 The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine.

Goffman, Erving 1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.