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Herbert mead symbolic interactionism
An essay on symbolic interactionism
Herbert mead symbolic interactionism
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I chose the movie American history X and the theory is Sutherland’s differential Association theory (DAT). We look at many theories. In this theory people are taught that beliefs, involvements, behaviors, and attachments, can possess pro-social attachment. In the movie we see a correlation between the two brothers which shows social control theory, social bonding and social attachments. We then examine Edward Sutherland’s theory to begin to understand that, what we have learned from behaviors are taught.
Emotions have largely been ignored by the classical theorists of sociology mostly due to its abstract, intangible and supposed ‘dangerous’ nature. It was only recently in contemporary times when a number of approaches on how to study emotions more closely were suggested. Out of all the different approaches suggested, I feel that the symbolic interactionist theory is the most convincing. This is because it ties in the aspect of individual agency and also overlaps with some of the other theories. While sociology revolves around the study of society, we tend to overlook the power one has over his actions.
Symbolic interactionism suggests the idea that people act based on how they perceive others and their intentions. “Central to SI’s view of the human subject is the idea that everyone is a meaning-making person. Human events and objects must be understood and interpreted. Even the situation to which people respond is a matter of interpretation, as ethno methodologists and cognitive sociologists have shown.” (Gusfield, J.,2003).
The application of symbolic interaction, which focuses on an individual’s social interaction as well as their interpretation of said interactions, can be clearly seen in Goffman’s book titled The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. As the title suggests, the author attempted to focus and explain the presentation of self in social settings, and this was done through the sociological perspective now known as dramaturgical analysis. Dramaturgical analysis or dramaturgy, coined by Goffman himself, looks at and analyzes the context of human behavior in social
Social Prejudices and Symbolic Interactionism Wm Hayden Locke Darton State College In sociology there are three different sociological perspectives used to study and explain sociological phenomena. These are structural functionalism (which focuses on how each part of society functions and works towards contributing to the while), conflict theory (which looks at the way social inequalities contribute to society as a whole), and symbolic interactionism (which deals with one-to-one interactions and communications between people within social groups).
Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach to understanding the relationship between humans and society. The basic notion of symbolic interactionism is that human action and interaction are understandable only through the exchange of meaningful communication or symbols. In this approach, humans are portrayed as acting, as opposed to being acted upon. Herbert Blumer (1990) set out three basic priciples of the perspective where the first one is ‘meaning’. Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they credited.
Sociology has taught several that there are different perspectives on life situations. The life situations can even be a simple as going to a supermarket. When I go to the supermarket, I can apply two different perspectives and they are interactionalist and feminist. The feminist perspective focuses on how women are seen and treated by society. The interactionalist perspective focuses on how humans interact in society Based on the feminist perspective, as a woman society would expect me to go to the supermarket to shop for my family.
Interactionism is a sociological approach that focuses on the influence of small groups on our behavior other than the power of large institutions. Interactionists believe that our behavior is pushed by the way we interpret situations in smaller groups for example, how we see ourselves in alliance to order individuals in the group, how we see other members also how they see us. Social action or interactionist theorists do not believe that we are ‘programmed’ by the socialization process. However they see individuals as being influenced by the socialization process but having the power to choose how they will really behave and make their own roles. These particular theorists have very little concern in social structure as a whole.
Symbolic Interactionism According to symbolic interactionism, schools provide a platform that permit labelling of individuals. Symbolic interactionism focuses on student, teacher interaction and how it affects everyday life (William Little 2014). Since students trust teachers opinion, some of the teachers expectations hurt students or may help them aim higher. My primary school used to have more than one class for each grade for example grade six green, six yellow, six blue...and red.
Symbolic Interactionism is those symbols or things to which we attach meaning to. They are the key to understanding how we view the world and communicate with one another. Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead developed this perspective in sociology. An example the book gives is the words ““boyfriend” and “brother” or “girlfriend” and “sister” (.pg. 14).” Both of these symbols are certainly different, and each symbol acquires different behavior.
Rather than looking at a social system overall, such as the total population of a country, interactionism focuses on a smaller-scale social interactions, such as the interactions between characters or small social groups. Interactionism in sociology focuses on the way that we act, or make careful choices concerning our behaviours that continue from how we understand situations. In other words, humans are not only reacting to social provocations; we are social actors and need to alter our behaviour based on the actions of others. Interactionism in sociology reviews how different social actors make sense of or understand the behaviour of those surrounding us. This evidence can be used to understand the social construction of the world, which is focused on not only the meanings that we give to behaviour, but also how we understand the meanings of behaviour of ourselves and others.
Theseconcepts of ‘I’ and the 'me ' make up the self (Ritzer, 2011). Mead came up with a theory called ‘Symbolic interactionism’ in which hestates that the crucial features that separates human beings fromothers animals is the way of interaction(Ritzer , 2011). Like many other thinkers he settles on language and ‘significant symbols’, as ways of differentiating human interaction from that assigned to animals. While animals do have the capacity to communicatewith one another, they cannot do so on a symbolic level. Because human interactions involve symbols (language, objects, signifiers, gestures) interaction is much more complex.
Researcher position: Epistemology: Constructivist epistemology will underpin this study, Crotty (1998) states that meaning is constructed out of various phenomena resulting from interaction with life experiences. Since meaning has to be constructed, the proposed study will be premised on an interpretivist approach grounded by the symbolic interactionism perspective. Symbolic interactionism gives emphasis to the social interaction process as a means by which meaning and interpretation is made, For us to understand the behavior of people, symbolic interactionism becomes vital especially that it lays emphasis on the people interpret word and give meaning to symbols ( Denzin,1998;Patton,2002).Since human beings react towards things based on the
Whether it is an argument about equal rights for women, or what issues that might be causing the economy to start failing. With each idea being done by a sociologist, another sociologist will disagree and explain why he or she thinks so. All in all, no matter where a person is in his/her life, he/she will see and face one social issue after another. “Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society” (OpenStax College,
It refers to the patterns of communication, interpretation and adjustment between individuals. Both the verbal and nonverbal responses that a listener then delivers are similarly constructed in expectation of how the original speaker will react. Workers contribution is more involved in this theory. (Markes, 1999) Contributions 1)
