Interactionism
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Interactionism
1. Humans act towards things on the basis of meanings individuals have for them.
2. Meaning is created through interaction between people.
3. Meanings are modified through an interpretive process.
Interactionism argues that people's selves are social products, but that these selves are also purposive and creative. People act toward things based on the meaning those things have for them, and these meanings are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation.
Interactionists focus on the subjective aspects of social life(micro level), rather than on objective social systems. One reason for this focus is that interactionists base their perspective on their image of humans, rather than on their image of society( as the functionalists do). For interactionists, human are pragmatic 实用的务实的 actors who continually must adjust their behavior to the actions of other actors. We can adjust to these actions only because we are able to interpret them, i.e. to denote them symbolically and threat the actions and those who perform them as symbolic objects. This process of adjustment is aided by our ability to imaginatively rehearse alternative lines of action before we act. The process is further aided by our ability to think about and to react to our own actions and even our selves as symbolic objects. Thusm the interactionist theorist ses humans as active, creative participants who construct their social world not as passive, conforming objects of socialization.
Social consists of organized and patterned interactions among individuals. thus, research by interactionists focues on easily observable face-to-face interactions rather than on macro-level structural relationships involving social institutions. Furthermore, this focus on interaction and the meaning of events to the participants in thos events shifts the attention of the interactionist away from stable norms and values toward more changeable, readjusting social processes. Thereas fur functionalists socialization creates stability in the social system, for interactionists negotiation among members of society creates temporary, socially constructed relations which remain in a constant flux, despite relative stabiity in the basic framework governing those relations.
These emphases on symbols, negotiated reality and the social construction of society lead to an interest in the roles people play.discusses roles dramaturgically, using an analogy to the theather with human social behavior seen as more or less well scripted and with humans as role -taking actors. Role-taking is a key mechanism of interaction, for it permits us to take the other's perspective, to see what our actions might mean to the other actors with whom we interact. At other times, interactionist emphasize the improvisational quality of roles, with human social behavior seen as poorly scripted and with human as role-making improvisers.
Ethonomethodology, raises the question of how people who are interacting with each other can create the illusion of a shared social order even when they don't understand each other fully and in fact have different points of view.
Interactionists tend to study social interaction through participant observation, rather than surveys and interviews. They argue that close contact and immersion in the everyday lives of the participants is necessary for understanding the meaning of actions, the definition of the situation itself, and the process by which actors construct the situation through their interaction. Given this close contact, interactionists could hardly remain free of value commitments, and in fact ,interactionists make explicit use of their values in choosing what to study but strive to be objective in the conduct of their research.
Core Assumptions and Statements
The theory consists of three core principles: meaning, language and thought. These core principles lead to conclusions about the creation of a person’s self and socialization into a larger community (Griffin, 1997).
Meaning states that humans act toward people and things according to the meanings that give to those people or things. Symbolic Interactionism holds the principal of meaning to be the central aspect of human behavior.
Language gives humans a means by which to negotiate meaning through symbols. Humans identify meaning in speech acts with others.
Thought modifies each individual’s interpretation of symbols. Thought is a mental conversation that requires different points of view.
With these three elements the concept of the self can be framed. People use ‘the looking-glass self’: they take the role of the other, imagining how we look to another person. The self is a function of language, without talk there would be no self concept. People are part of a community, where our generalized other is the sum total of responses and expectations that we pick up from the people around us. We naturally give more weight to the views of significant others.
Example
A boy (Jeremy) and a girl (Kim) broke up last year. When Jeremy received an email from Kim to go out he agreed and they went to a bar. Jeremy had a different kind of meaning though in comparison with Kim. Jeremy went out as friends, where Kim went out as with the meaning of ‘potential boyfriend’. Also in the communication the language was misunderstood. Kim wanted to have a romantic night, while Jeremy wanted to have a talk in a bar. This is also caused by the nonverbal element of emails. The third miscommunication is under thought. When Jeremy replied so fast Kim thought that they were going out to a romantic place. Jeremy went out just as ‘friends’. They both used an internal dialogue to interpret the situation and to make a perception of the evening.
posted by C-T @ 4:09 PM
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