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In no more than 500 words provide a brief response to the reading that answers the questions below:The perspective’s major influences (just list them thus, “Symbolic interactionism) was influenced by the ideas of xxx.”).What are the main ideas of symbolic interactionism? Overall, what does this theory emphasize? (No more than two sentences).Identify and briefly describe 1 main idea/contribution made by either Blumer or Goffman.What are your thoughts about the idea you selected? Your reaction might be any of the following: (1) whether you agreed or disagreed with the position or argument (if applicable) and why (2) the applicability or not of the idea to your own life and/or the lives of those around you (3) how useful the idea or argument has been for understanding your own life and/or current events (4) how things you saw or heard in the media and pop culture relate to and make more (or less) sense because of this idea.
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Symbolic
Interactionism
SYA 3010 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
LECTURE FOR MODULE 6
Macrosociology (Collectivist)
Vs. Microsociology (Individualist)
Microsociology: The sociological analysis of narrower slices of
social life
Emphasis on face-to-face interaction and how, through
interaction, people create and reproduce society
Symbolic interactionism, exchange/rational choice,
phenomenology,
Self in social context: Human communication and role-taking
are fundamental to the development of the self
E.g.: Cooley’s “looking glass self” (see below slide)
Symbolic Interactionism
Recall the bus and bag-on-seat scenario that
starts the chapter and is recounted in the
module’s introductory video recording.
It is used to show:
The richness and complexity of social life.
That everyday life is constructed and ritualized.
Importantly, that it is these kinds of issues that
symbolic interactionism addresses.
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic Interactionism
A micro-sociological theory, influenced by philosopher George
Herbert Mead
Emphasizes the role of symbols and language as core elements of
all human interaction.
”Symbol” – item used to represent another (e.g. flag representing a
nation).
Focuses on how meaning is made through everyday interaction.
People’s actions are based, not on “objective meanings” but on
their interpretations of/meanings given to the world.
E.G. race and gender
Highlights how the self and society are created and recreated
during the course of interaction
George Herbert Mead 1863-1931
I start with a brief overview of George Herbert Mead’s influence on the
perspective. Another scenario:
Imagine that you’re getting ready for tonight’s date and you’re trying on different
outfits. As you put them on, what are you doing?
You’re looking in the mirror and thinking—”How do I look in this? What impression
am I giving about myself?”
In other words, in deciding what to wear, you’re talking to yourself. But this
conversation involves someone other than you: It’s a dialogue between you and
an imagined other, your date.
Through the use of language, you’re able to answer your own questions as if you
were another person looking at yourself. Through language, you are able to see
yourself as an object, just as your date does, and react to your appearance as
she or he does.
To some degree, you experience your “self” socially, through taking on attitudes
you assume others have toward your own behaviors, and based on those
presumed attitudes, you control your own conduct.
George Herbert Mead 1863-1931
The preceding scenario reflects questions that fascinated
Mead:
George Herbert Mead
Graduated from Oberlin College in 1883.
Pursued graduate studies in philosophy and psychology at Harvard
University. There, he encountered American pragmatist William James
and German philosopher Wilhelm Wundt whose ideas would prove
particularly influential.
After completing his masters degree, he began his career at the
University of Michigan.
Two years later moved on to the newly founded University of Chicago
and remained there until his death.
Mead’s influence on sociology stemmed largely from his graduate course
in social psychology. A dynamic speaker, his lectures attracted students
from a wide array of disciplines including sociology.
Mead, who lacked confidence in his writing, and never published his
ideas.
His students transcribed his lectures, and published them posthumously in
his seminal work, Mind, Self, and Society
Mead’s Ideas and
Symbolic Interactionism
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Individuals are born into social structures and retain those ongoing
patterns of cooperative interpersonal behaviors
Individuals develop a capacity for acting cooperatively with others
through a process of imitation, active coaching, and biological
maturation
The first critical behavioral capacity is learning conventional or
significant gestures that mean the same thing those making them
and those reading them
The preceding gives individuals the ability to role-take, placing
themselves in the role of others, and thus, anticipating their likely
actions
With role-taking comes the capacity to imaginatively rehearse (in
the mind) the consequences of various alternative behaviors, inhibit
those that would be inappropriate, and emit those that would
facilitate cooperation.
Mead’s Ideas and
Symbolic Interactionism
6.
Individuals see themselves as objects in all situations;
6.
They derive self-images about how others think of them, by reading others’
gestures, and adjust their conduct to gain a positive evaluation from others
7.
Self-images crystallize over time into more permanent conceptions of
self
8.
Permits role-taking with generalized others (communities of
attitudes/beliefs)
9.
Societies built by these behavioral capacities and through these
capacities societies and institutions reproduce themselves
10.
Existing social structures constrain significant gestures that people use,
their role-taking, their minded deliberations, and their sense of self/selves
invoked in interaction
a.
Result: behavioral capacities of individuals are aligned with the constraints
and demands of the social structure
Blumer and Symbolic
Interactionism
1.
Coined the term “symbolic interactionism” in 1937
2.
Outlined the central concepts that would form the
foundation of the perspective.
3.
Inspiration for his work lay principally with the ideas
developed by George Herbert Mead.
4.
The “Chicago School” was at the forefront in
developing a sociology that, through detailed,
empirical studies, explores how individuals
understand and negotiate their everyday life.
5.
Blumer advanced the intellectual agenda of the
Chicago School through his codification of
Mead’s analyses of the self and its relationship to
language
Blumer and Symbolic
Interactionism
Blumer’s three premises (meaning, interaction,
interpretation):
1.
Human beings act toward things on the basis of the
meanings that the things have for them.
2.
The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises
out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s
fellows.
3.
These meanings are handled in, and modified
through, an interpretative process used by the person
in dealing with the things he encounters.
Blumer and Symbolic
Interactionism
Interpretation involves constructing the meaning of
objects or another’s actions, because meaning does
not inhere in things or actions themselves.
One responds to her physical and social surroundings
on the basis of her interpretation or definition.
That is, as we act/do anything, we are actively
interpreting (assigning meaning to) objects/others’
actions. We may not be conscious that we are doing
so. We are doing so nevertheless.
No action or thing is meaningful in and of itself. We
attach meanings to actions and to things.
Blumer and Symbolic
Interactionism
E.G., Your response to another’s gesture (request to copy
your class notes) is dependent on how you define or give
meaning to the request.
Still meaning is not the product only of your mind or
inherent in the specific words used by the other person;
instead, it is developed out of the interaction itself.
You may let some classmates copy your notes but refuse
to let others do so – depending on your interpretation of
the motives (meaning) underlying the request.
E.G. Was the person absent from class because of an illness, or
is he just lazy? Is he asking for the notes in order to strike up a
friendship? Again, the answer itself does not determine the
decision for everyone. Not everyone will think of being ill as as
a valid excuse for missing class. Others are quite happy
helping a slacker.
Blumer and Symbolic
Interactionism
Interpretation occurs through a conversation of
gestures involving significant symbols (words,
gestures with shared meanings).[Reflects Mead]
During this internal dialogue the individual takes
the attitude of the other, experiences herself as
an object, and calls out in herself the same
response to her actions that is called out in others.
Self-consciousness—the ability to see oneself as
others do and, thus, anticipate responses to one’s
behavior—therefore has a profound effect on
social life. Why? Because it makes “joint action”
possible.
Blumer and Symbolic
Interactionism
Joint action defined: “the larger collective form
of action that is constituted by the fitting together
of the lines of behavior of the separate
participants…” .
Joint actions range from a simple collaboration of
two individuals to a complex alignment of the
acts of huge organizations or institutions.
Family gathering; a corporate merger; a nation
conducting foreign policy – all the outcome of a
reflexive, interpretive process in which participants
assign meaning to the separate acts that together
constitute the joint action
Blumer and Symbolic
Interactionism
Important: Blumer wants to emphasize the differences between
symbolic interactionism and more collectivist approaches (e.g.,
functionalism)
Argues such approaches present the social structure as a
‘straitjacket’ that determines the behavior of individuals/groups.
While he recognizes how macro social structures (like norms,
values, roles, status position) do play a role in organizing social
life, he emphasizes that macro structures are the aggregate
result of micro level interactions.
So, social actors are not merely vessels who mechanically do
what is prescribed by social norms.
Rather, social life as a dynamic process.
People, through interpreting others’ and their own gestures, are
always creating and recreating patterns of behavior, that form the
basis of the social order.
Erving Goffman (19221982)
Born in Alberta, Canada. Attended the University of
Toronto and then the University of Chicago, where he
earned the masters and doctorate degrees.
Spent the next three years as a visiting scientist at the
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda,
Maryland.
His research led to one of the landmark books in
sociology, Asylums (1961).
Taught at University of Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley, and
finally University of Pennsylvania until his death.
Other publications: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
(1959), Stigma (1963), Interaction Ritual (1967)
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday
Life)
Mead’s notion that we see ourselves as objects, as
others see us, forms the basis for one of Goffman’s
central concepts:
Impression management – verbal and nonverbal
practices used to present an acceptable image
of our self to others
Focus: how we carry out such performances:
1.
Concealing information about ourselves that does
not fit the image we want to project.
2.
Audience segregation: making sure that those for
whom we play one of our parts are not present when
we perform different, likely incompatible, roles
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday
Life)
Note that in controlling what we say and do, and
don’t say and do, and how we do and don’t say
and do it – we are taking the attitude of the other.
Our attempts to project an image of ourselves is in
some measure, guided by the imagined
responses of others to our actions.
If that were not so, we could not coordinate our
behavior with others and engage in relatively
predictable and smoothly functioning interaction.
Impression Management
E.G. How we present ourselves including how we
dress, speak, even our posture, in a job interview
or the first time we meet a professor, is likely very
different from how we present ourselves when we
are at a family gathering at which you’re meeting
your boyfriend’s parents, or out dancing at a club
with our friends. Think also of what we are doing
when we take a selfie and post it. Or take several
selfies, then choose the one that we will post.
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life)
Goffman breaks with the traditional symbolic
interactionism of Mead and Blumer.
Does not deny that individuals see themselves as others
see them, but less interested in exploring internal
conversations in which individuals engage as they
design their conduct.
Genius lies in exploring how social arrangements and
actual, physical co-presence of individuals— the
“interaction order”—shapes the organization of self.
While for Mead social interaction is rooted in one’s
imagination, Goffman looks at the scene within which
individuals orient their actions to one another.
The essence of self is found not in the internal,
cognitive deliberations of the individual (In our
example: Why is the lady’s bag on the seat?) but in
interaction itself.
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
Definition of the Situation – derived from W. I.
Thomas, Chicago School
Thomas argued that before ”any self-determined
act of behavior there is always a stage of
examination and deliberation which we may call
the definition of the situation.”
Thus, individuals do not react automatically to a
situation; rather their reactions are constructed on
the basis of meanings attributed to a situation.
In turn, those interested in understanding individuals
and their behaviors must attend to the subjective
meanings that they attach to their actions.
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
1. For Thomas, people are born into groups that have already
defined rules of conduct, and which they have not had the
chance of defining without interference.
1. (E.G., We can’t just say, “Sc I’m going to use expletives in my job
interviewer! I’m simply exercising my right to freedom of speech”
can we? Well not w/o repercussions!
2. Thomas noted a link between meaning and action in this
famous phrase: “If men define situations as real, they are real in
their consequences.”
1.
That is, behavior is fundamentally shaped by, or a consequence
of, the way in which individuals define the situation.
2. Suggests that reality itself is created through the definition of the
situation, because it lays the foundation on which individuals will
interpret others’ actions as well as their own.
3.
Individuals, in short, create reality as they define it. Thus, if you
define a class as boring, then it will be, and your efforts will be
different from what they would be if you had defined it as
interesting.
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
Goffman agrees that the act of defining the
situation establishes the basis on which an
encounter enfolds. [See quote on p. 540]
In defining the situation, actors practice the arts of
impression management more effectively
Knowing which “self” an individual is obliged to
present, and how to present it is determined by the
definition of what is going on in a situation
Knowing whether you’re—in a particular encounter—
a student, worker, friend, whether you should present
yourself as studious, compliant, caring, requires
knowing first what the situation itself demands of the
actors.
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
•
Dramaturgy – Goffman analyzed social interaction using
an analogy with the theater.
•
Claimed that “life itself is a dramatically enacted
thing.”
•
Focused on the symbolic dimensions of social
encounters in order to explore the nature of the self,
and its relation to the broader moral code that shapes
interaction performances.
•
Introduced theater vocabulary: front, backstage,
setting, audience, performance, character
•
They are all part of his repertoire of terms used to
examine the often-unspoken and taken-for-granted
subtleties that structure the interaction order
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
1.
Front
Front is that part of the individual’s performance
which regularly functions in a general and fixed
fashion to define the situation for those who
observe the performance.
Fronts tend to become “institutionalized” as
performances conducted in similar settings by
similar actors and thus give rise to “stereotyped
expectations” that transcend and shape any
particular presentation.
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
Front is divided into two parts:
1.
Setting: scenery and props that make up the physical
space where a performance is conducted
1.
2.
Prof – classroom; lifeguard – body of water; high-powered
exec – spacious office
Personal front: items of “expressive equipment”
identified with the performance himself
1.
E.G.” insignia of office or rank; clothing, sex, age, racial
characteristics, size and looks, posture, speech patterns,
facial expressions, bodily gestures”
2.
Serve as resources for a person to appear in a particular
light before others.
3.
Audiences attribute traits, fairly or unfairly, to performers on
the basis of sex, age, race, looks and performers are aware
of this
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
2.
Backstage
Contrasted with front, backstage is the region of
performance normally unobserved by and
restricted from the audience
Backstage is:
“ where the impression fostered by a performance is
knowingly contradicted as a matter of course…[where]
illusions and impressions are openly constructed….Here
costumes and other parts of the personal front may be
adjusted and scrutinized for flaws…Here the performer can
relax; he can drop his front, forgo speaking his lines, step
out of character.”
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
Backstage continued:
E.G. In restaurants: server is courteous, deft, hygienic
while maintaining his impression of the “front”; backstage
is cursing the customer, sneezing over someone’s meal,
assembling previously used tabled bread
Through these concepts (front/backstage), Goffman
focuses on how space regulates performances and
impressions
Important issue: ‘the nature of the self’
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
A distinction is made between the self as character
vs the self as performer
3.
Character
3.
The self is not an organic thing that has a specific
location; it is a dramatic effect arising from a scene
that is presented.
4.
What’s critical is whether it is credited or discredited
5.
The self is an image, a managed impression that is
fabricated in concert with others during an
encounter
6.
The self is imputed (ascribed) by others; derived
from the whole scene
Goffman and Symbolic Interactionism
(The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life
4.
Performer
3.
The individual possesses a self that is uniquely his
own. We present a contrived image to the
audience in the front, but in the backstage we
relax, and step out of character
Question: if we step out of character, to what do we
step in?
3.
3.
Self is not a fabrication, but a performer who fabricates
impressions
The self as performer is more in keeping with our
general understanding of selfhood
4.
3.
I.E. Behind whatever part the performer plays, there lies a
thinking, feeling, “person,” a core being that is who we
REALLY are.
Theoretical Orientation
Goffman: Multidimensional
Action
Impression management is both rationalist and non-
ratianalist
Order
Both individualist and collectivist
Individual has the freedom to manage his selfpresentation but only so far as such presentation does
not violate rules of interaction (elevator)
Merchants of morality (collectivist)
Interaction order is produced and reproduced
through moral rules
Arlie Russell Hochschild
(1940 – )
Explored the sociology of emotion: studies what
people think and what they feel.
Draws on two distinct approaches: the organismic
model; the interactional model. Also, a third
approach: the emotion-management
perspective.”
Organismic: how emotions are rooted in an
individual’s biological or psychological makeup.
Interactionistic: the role of social processes in
shaping emotive experiences.
Emotion-management: brings together the two
previously-identified approaches
Arlie Russell Hochschild –
Emotion Management Model
Emotion: a biologically given sense:
1. Borrowing from Darwin, Hochschild defines
emotion as a “biologically-given sense,” much like
hearing, sight, and smell, that communicates
information about the world around us.
2. Thus, emotions are fundamentally connected to
biological processes.
3. Unlike our other senses, however, emotions are
directly tied to behavior; they are experienced as
the body physiologically readies itself to engage in
action.
Arlie Russell Hochschild –
Emotion Management Model
Emotions are created by emotion work:
1. Hochschild maintains that emotions are actively
produced and managed by individuals in the
context of interaction: they are not simply
experienced, they are created.
2. In an important sense, we “do” emotions in the
form of emotion work.
3. This refers to efforts to alter (i.e., manage) the
intensity or type of feelings one is experiencing.
Arlie Russell Hochschild –
Emotion Management Model
Types of emotion work:
1.
Cognitive emotion work refers to “the attempt to
change images, ideas, or thoughts in the service
of changing the feelings associated with them.
2.
Bodily emotion work entails the effort to alter the
physical effects of an emotion.
3.
Expressive emotion work involves the attempt to
alter the public display of an emotional state.
Arlie Russell Hochschild –
Emotion Management Model
Deep acting:
1. Hochschild’s emotion management focuses on “deep acting,” our
inner efforts to produce not the appearance of feeling, but rather
a “real feeling that has been self-induced.
2. The fact that we try to shape our emotional experiences speaks to
the power that the definition of the situation and the feeling rules
that help frame situations have over our expressive life.
Feelings are managed by emotional labor:
1. Here, one’s deep acting is sold for a wage, and inner feelings are
managed in order to produce an outward display as part of one’s
job.
2. Hochschild found that manufacturing feelings of caring and
cheerfulness while suppressing anger or boredom was a common
feature of the job.
Arlie Russell Hochschild –
Emotion Management Model
Emotional labor is a pervasive feature:
1.
Hochschild points out that it is required by an
array of jobs that share three characteristics:
2.
Face-to-face or voice-to-voice interaction with
the public,
3.
A directive to produce specified emotional
states in clients, and
4.
Through training and supervision, employer
control over workers’ emotional activities.
5.
From this description, it is easy to see that
emotional labor is a pervasive feature in a
service economy.
Arlie Russell Hochschild –
Emotion Management Model
The cost of emotional labor:
1. Emotional labor, however, often exacts a high cost
from the worker.
2. Hochschild draws a parallel between the
alienation experienced by the factory worker and
that experienced by those employed in service
industries.
3. If the factory worker’s body is bought and
controlled by his employer, it is the service worker’s
feelings that are subject to the dictates of another.
4. Though manifested in different ways, both are
detached or alienated from something that is vital
to their self.
Arlie Russell Hochschild –
Emotion Management Model
Transmutation of emotional work:
1. When our natural capacity to engage in emotion work is
sold for a wage and bought to serve the profit motive,
our feelings become a commodity engineered to further
corporate and organizational interests.
2. Transmuted” from a private act controlled by the
individual herself to one that is publicly administered by
a supervisor and codified in training manuals and
company policies, emotion work becomes rationalized
to better serve instrumental purposes.
Commodification of feelings:
1.
The demands for emotion management are shaped
by both class and gender relations such that middleclass workers and women are more susceptible to the
commodification of their emotive experiences.
Theoretical Orientation
Primarily multidimensional
Nonrational dimension: emotion work and deep
acting.
Rationalist dimension: emotional labor.
Collectivist and rational dimension:
commodification of feelings.
Multidimensional approach: feeling rules.
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