Lawrence T Nichols. The Cambridge Handbook of Social Theory. Cambridge University Press. 2020.
The intellectual orientation known as symbolic interactionism can be characterized as one of the “most American” approaches in sociology. It developed in the United States and it builds on earlier intellectual traditions there, especially the philosophy of pragmatism. Symbolic interactionism has affinities with major intellectual approaches in Europe, including both the cognitively oriented French Cartesian perspective and also the Germanic tradition of “interiority” or “consciousness,” but it is distinguished from these by a fundamental emphasis on “doing” and on “making” and on the consequences of abstractions or categories. Like the “verstehen” (“understanding”) view that is usually associated with Max Weber, symbolic interactionism assumes that shared meanings are prerequisites for social relations, and also that interaction always involves an interpretive process among participants. But it focuses especially on the ways in which such meanings are created in, or emerge from, contexts called “situations,” as well as the consequences of particular meanings, especially through their incorporation into individual identities or “selves.” At the same time, it stops short of phenomenology, which radically questions the validity of all conventional meanings. Symbolic interactionists acknowledge an external world, even if it is one in which meanings are never settled with finality, and they have contributed much to an understanding of “the sociology of everyday life.”
The question of how to date the historical emergence of symbolic interactionism is either very easy or very difficult, depending on one’s initial assumptions. The fact that Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) introduced the name “symbolic interactionism” in 1937 is beyond dispute. But he did so largely with regard to earlier work, especially that of philosopher-social psychologist George Herbert Mead (1868-1931), who did not use this term. Therefore, the question arises as to whether symbolic interactionism is really “Blumerism” or “Blumer’s reading of Mead,” and also whether Blumer should be considered, as it were, its “rightful owner” and most authoritative interpreter. An imposing presence with a sharp critical mind, Blumer seems at times to have presented himself in these ways, especially in polemical exchanges. Eventually, however, sociologists moved far beyond Blumer, while retaining the name he had invented (Reynolds and Herman-Kinney, 2003).
Earlier Currents of Thought
At the time Mead was developing ideas that would become foundational to the symbolic interactionist perspective, social scientists in the United States were still very much influenced by European intellectual schools of thought. In France and England, positivism dominated through the writings of Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, and Herbert Spencer, all of whom mostly ignored the issue of interpretation that is central to symbolic interactionism. As a caveat, however, it should be noted that Comte’s famous “law of three stages” did involve consciousness, as did the “collective representations” discussed by Durkheim in Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1905). And in 1913-1914 Durkheim gave a course of lectures (Prus, 2009) that appeared, posthumously, as Pragmatism and Sociology (Durkheim, 1983).
By contrast, German intellectuals developed ideas very much in accord with the symbolic interactionist perspective. Idealist philosophers such as Friedrich von Schelling, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Immanuel Kant argued that humans create the worlds they inhabit through the operation of mind (Reynolds, 2003). Interestingly, Karl Marx—despite his famous critique of Hegel and his advocacy of “dialectical materialism”—also deserves recognition here. For Marx asserted that human beings “make their own history,” and he placed great emphasis on states of mind, including both true and false consciousness, and especially “class consciousness,” the key to revolutionary change and a future just society. There is thus no inherent contradiction between symbolic interactionism and Marxism or other conflict-oriented approaches.
Informed by, and responding to, the writings of the idealists and of Marx, the economist-historian-sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) produced influential works rooted in the idea of meaningfulness. All personal interaction, in Weber’s view, became “social” through a mutual orientation of participants toward a set of shared meanings. Weber also emphasized the role of ideas in producing history, including systems of economics, as illustrated in his 1905 essay, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” Like later symbolic interactionism, Weber’s approach was also deeply social psychological. He examined both the cognitive states of minds and the emotions of actors, that is, their “spirit” (Geist), an attribute that later symbolic interactionists would call an “attitude.” Protestant Christians in the Calvinist sphere, Weber argued, defined successful work in the world as an indication of being chosen for eternal life. They freely created this definition and developed an identity in accordance with it, experiencing a deep anxiety as a consequence of their theology.
Interestingly, W. E. B. DuBois, a historian, sociologist, and civil rights activist, studied in Germany while Weber was teaching and writing, and the two scholars met and carried on a limited correspondence. Weber praised DuBois as the foremost authority on race relations in the American South, and DuBois contributed an article to a journal edited by Weber (Hughey and Goss, 2018). Most significantly for present purposes, DuBois (1868-1963) subsequently published a famous work, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) that can be considered “Germanic” or “verstehende” in that it featured the idea of consciousness, indeed a “double consciousness” that characterized the knowledge of blacks living within an oppressive white-supremacist social order. Consistent with the approaches of Marx and Weber, and similar to symbolic interactionist analyses that would appear decades later, DuBois illumined how people create their own worlds of shared meaning. Souls likewise anticipated later work by Erving Goffman about “the wise,” that is, those with special insider knowledge.
In the United States, meanwhile, two relevant approaches were developing: the philosophy of pragmatism, and social psychology. William James (1842-1910) introduced the term “pragmatism” in his 1889 Union Address, and John Dewey subsequently became the perspective’s best-known advocate. But James and others credited Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) as pragmatism’s founding figure. A key event was the publication of the 1878 article, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in which Peirce discussed three degrees of clarity of concepts. The highest of these occurred when people considered the effects and “the practical bearings” of their ideas. An understanding of consequences, Peirce argued, becomes “the whole of our conception of the object.” Thus, abstractions are most fully grasped in terms of behavior and actual experience, that is, in terms of the difference they make in people’s lives. Later symbolic interactionists would closely adhere to this principle in their treatments of language.
Social psychology, as it developed in the United States during the final quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century, placed special emphasis on the ideas of “social control,” “the self,” and “attitudes.” Thus, Edward A. Ross published a widely influential series of articles on “social control” in early issues of the American Journal of Sociology, basing these largely on French sociologist Gabriel Tarde’s discussions of “imitation” but also following Emile Durkheim’s definition of “social facts” as possessing externality and exercising constraint. Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929), at the University of Michigan, subsequently contributed the influential idea of the “looking-glass self” that referred to seeing oneself through the eyes of others. Cooley (1902) thus posited an ability of humans to get outside themselves and to observe and evaluate their own actions from the perspective of others—a conception that some would trace to the eighteenth-century writings of Adam Smith, David Hume, and other Scottish moralists on “the impartial spectator.” Such “reflexivity” or making the self into an “object” would be central in Mead’s thought.
Cooley also did an influential analysis of experience in “primary groups,” by which he meant those that were both relatively early and also especially important, in particular families, playgroups, and neighborhoods. In a manner similar to German sociologist Ferdinand Toennies, who had contrasted “Gemeinschaft” (“community”) with “Gesellschaft” (“society”), Cooley argued that primary group experiences differed from those in “secondary” groups. Importantly, primary groups were thought of as relatively small, with face-to-face interaction. Later symbolic interactionists would tend to focus on exactly this type of experience, and Erving Goffman would attempt to make face-to-face interaction a recognized special field within sociology.
George Herbert Mead
Generally considered the most important source for what became known, via Blumer, as symbolic interactionism, Mead was a philosopher interested in the nature of mind who also taught an advanced course on social psychology at the University of Chicago. In an early article on “The Social Self,” Mead (1901) sought to articulate how persons acquire social identities by regarding themselves as objects. Humans, he argued, are capable of acting as “observers” of their own experience, including their sensations and their behavior, which they control through “vocal gestures.” These become an “inner conversation.” As persons develop in childhood and adolescence via these processes, they “play all the roles” in their group, at least vicariously, in imagination.
Over the course of the next three decades, Mead developed these ideas further. Working within an evolutionary perspective, Mead (1910) characterized social interaction as a “conversation of gestures.” Each participant acts as both stimulus and response to another, with gestures enabling “mutual adjustment” throughout encounters. “Consciousness of meaning” refers to a “consciousness of attitudes” that participants adopt toward one another, a consciousness of response or readiness to respond. All these dynamics take place within a “social situation.”
A decade later, Mead presented a “behavioristic account of the significant symbol.” All living organisms, he asserted, respond to their environments selectively, by “creating objects” out of them. All “selves” arise in “conduct,” which is “the sum of the reactions of living beings to their environments.” Human children become “social beings” by means of a “play life” in which they act toward themselves as they would act toward others. They thus develop the ability to “be the other” while also being themselves. A fundamentally important transition occurs when children pass from the initial play period into participation in organized “games” which involve formal rules and which require that children see themselves as all other participants in the game—called the “generalized other”—would see them. This leads Mead (1922: 163) to conclude that “mind” is actually “a field” that is not confined to individuals nor located in enclosed brains. “Significance” belongs to “things in their relation to individuals.”
Mead continued to develop these various arguments and insights in his university courses, but he published relatively little about them. They subsequently appeared, three years after Mead’s death in the volume Mind, Self and Society, which was compiled by graduate students in philosophy on the basis of transcribed notes of Mead’s lectures. Later commentators have sometimes argued that the title presents Mead’s emphases in reverse order, that he really began with society or the group and tried to show how human minds and selves could arise within it. Despite his undisputed brilliance, Mead was not a prominent figure in sociology until the process of “becoming Mead” (Huebner, 2014) took place, in which later scholars developed and applied Mead’s ideas.
Blumer’s Approach
In the volume of essays, Symbolic Interactionism (1969), Herbert Blumer articulated three guiding assumptions which he drew from Mead’s works. First, humans act toward things on the basis of meanings that they attribute to those things. Second, the meaning of things is always derived from, or arises out of, social interaction among individuals. Third, the meanings attributed to things are handled in, and also modified through, an interpretive process used by those dealing with the things in question.
This mature statement distilled ideas that had developed over several decades. Blumer had introduced the term “symbolic interaction” in a 1937 essay where his purpose was largely to combat several alternative approaches, especially the doctrine of instincts, the stimulus-response view, and cultural determinism. In this formulation, Blumer (1937: 158) located his conceptualization within the field of social psychology:
A third view of human group life is that held by those social psychologists we have termed the symbolic interactionists. They … do not regard … forms of culture as consisting merely of so many different ways of acting. Instead, they believe that these forms of culture consist of common symbols, which are mutually shared and possessed by the members of the group.
Like Mead before him, Blumer discussed the development of social conduct in childhood, with particular emphasis on how children learn through patterns of reward (“satisfactions”) and by internalizing “definitions of situations.” The latter refer to “indications” about how young children should act (e.g., gestures of approval), that is, a language-based process of communication. A “definition” is thus
the means by which the attitudes and values of the group are conveyed to the individual… . a set of symbols to direct … behavior; this body of symbols represents the activities that make up social conduct.
(Blumer, 1937: 165)
Again following Mead, Blumer summarized the process by which children develop “selves” through the stages of “play” and “the game” so that ultimately they are able to act toward themselves from the point of view of “the generalized other.”
Blumer’s formulation reflects the popularity of the idea of the “definition of the situation” among University of Chicago sociologists, an idea that formulated in works by W. I. Thomas (1923) and by W. I. and Dorothy Swaine Thomas (1928). The key principle is that, if people define situations as real, they thereby acquire a sort of reality, at least in terms of actual consequences. Robert K. Merton later referred to this as “the Thomas Theorem,” and it is fair to say that the Theorem—which is a pure expression of American pragmatism—has inspired a great deal of symbolic interactionist work.
In 1962 Blumer published a chapter on “society as symbolic interactionism” that was reprinted in his 1969 collection of essays. Here Blumer asserted that society was composed of “acting units” that might include individuals, collectivities, or organizations, which, by means of an interpretive process, develop “acts to meet the situations in which they are placed” (Blumer, 1969: 85). Group action, he argued, consists of the fitting together of individual lines of action. Overall social organization provides a “framework” within which individuals act, but it does not determine their actions. Importantly, people “do not act toward culture, social structure or the like; they act toward situations” (Blumer, 1969: 88).
Moving beyond Mead, Blumer also devoted much time and energy to advocacy of the appropriate method for those working within a symbolic interactionist perspective. Very much in keeping with the classic Chicago school approach in which he trained, and which he helped to develop further, Blumer defined meaning-making and the modification of meanings as “naturalistic” events in the world. He therefore argued strongly for an observational or “field” approach in research that might be considered akin to social anthropology. This involves an identification with groups being studied, because sociologists must “catch the process of interpretation through which [acting units] construct their actions,” and they can only do so by “taking the role” of those they examine (Blumer, 1969: 86). This has strong affinities with the approach of “grounded theory” advocated by other sociologists connected with the University of Chicago (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Interestingly, Blumer’s early research (1933; 1935) included studies of the effects of popular movies on conduct, work that arguably relates to the more recent “cultural studies” genre.
Chicago Versus Iowa
Manford Kuhn (1911-1963), a professor at the University of Iowa, developed Mead’s ideas in other directions. Influenced by recent developments in quantitative methodology, Kuhn approached the analysis of interaction through the “operationalization” of concepts and variables. Also, in contrast to the Chicago emphasis on process, Kuhn accepted the idea of structure, which meant that selves and meanings could be regarded as relatively constant across situations. Committed to the ideal of precise measurement, Kuhn and his student Thomas McPartland developed an instrument called the “Twenty Statements Test” as a means of identifying components of the self (or of that part which Mead called the “me”). Each statement responded to the same question, “Who am I?” Kuhn and his collaborators found that respondents tended to prioritize aspects of self-identity, beginning with elements such as family membership and nationality and ending with elements such as hobbies and personal habits. This approach enabled the Iowa-based collaborators to formulate hypotheses that could be tested by means of inferential statistics.
After Kuhn’s death, another Iowa sociologist, Carl Couch (1925-1994), carried on the same approach under the rubric of “behavioral sociology” (Couch and Hintz, 1975). Additional work within the same theoretical paradigm and methodology—sometimes called the New Iowa School—was carried out by Michael Katovich and other collaborators (Couch, Saxton, and Katovich, 1986). These investigators created a specialized laboratory (Couch, 1987), complete with auditory and visual recording technology, in which interaction could be studied via the isolation of selected variables. In contrast to observation in natural settings as favored by Chicago sociologists, the laboratory approach also allowed researchers to examine interactional data repeatedly as a means of gaining further insight into its dynamics (Katovich and Chen, 2014). The Iowa School symbolic interactionists also sought to create links between their own work and that of the emerging field of communication studies. The continuing relevance of this interactionist variant is reflected in a recent issue of Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Katovich, 2017), which was devoted to “Carl J. Couch and the Iowa School.”
Goffman’s Dramaturgical Approach
One of the most distinctive approaches that can be considered symbolic interactionist appeared in Erving Goffman’s 1959 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Taking a cue, perhaps, from the famous Shakespearian saying that, “All the world’s a stage,” Goffman examined social interaction as theatrical performance by both individuals and “teams.” The traditional “self” of both the Chicago and Iowa schools gave way to appearances and impression management. In order to be effective, teams had to maintain “dramaturgical discipline,” and there was always a danger of betrayal, or that a team member might “give away the show.” A Chicago-trained sociologist, Goffman followed that tradition also by “locating” performances in what might be considered an ecological manner, especially “frontstage” and “backstage,” and he paid particular attention to the changes in self-presentation that occurred when actors moved from one realm to the other. Other works, including Encounters (1961), Interaction Ritual (1967), and Relations in Public (1971), further developed the micro-sociology of face-to-face interaction.
The 1961 book Asylums provided a dramaturgical ethnography of a large mental hospital, an environment that Goffman designated as a “total institution.” A particular focus was the “moral career” of patients, another idea with deep Chicago roots in works such as Edwin Sutherland’s The Professional Thief. The “career” resulted from shifting evaluations of selves, often in a negative direction, by powerful audiences.
In other work that was perhaps influenced by Mead’s famous discussion of organized games and role taking, Goffman examined risk and risk-taking. An influential essay, “Where the Action Is,” which appeared in Interaction Ritual (1967: 149-270) examined events in casinos. Subsequently, Goffman (1969) published essays on “strategic interaction” and “expression gaming” that further extended the dramaturgical metaphor, with particular attention to espionage literature, in which false identities were commonplace. Goffman focused on how “game-wise” players interpreted problematic and dangerous situations and chose lines of action. More recently Dmitri Shalin (2016) has continued to explore these ideas, with a focus on gambling as a stigmatized activity and the “commodification of risk.” These various writings by Goffman, along with his later volume, Frame Analysis (1974), provided the basis for a great deal of symbolic interactionist research. Goffman also contributed to the emerging sociology of gender in his 1979 book Gender Advertisements, which moved in the direction of cultural studies, as did his 1981 volume, Forms of Talk.
Labeling, Deviance, Social Control
One of the most influential applications of symbolic interactionist principles appeared in what is generally called the labeling or “social reaction” perspective on deviance and crime. This model flourished especially in the mid-to late 1960s, when it also influenced public policy, especially the “diversion” from the criminal justice system of nonviolent or first-time offenders and juveniles (President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, 1967). The social reaction perspective continues to be presented in textbooks and courses on criminology, juvenile delinquency, and deviance.
Historians have generally traced the origins of the labeling approach to work by criminologist Frank Tannenbaum (1893-1969) shortly before World War II, especially the concept of the “dramatization of evil” (Tannenbaum, 1938). This analysis, like others that would follow, identified stages in the transformation of identities, including: (1) participation in deviant or criminal acts due to maladjustment; (2) being “tagged” as an evildoer for doing evil deeds; and (3) acting in accordance with the newly imposed definition as self-concept changes. The approach thus combines several elements: behavior that violates norms; a negative response from an organized group; and a change in the self that reinforces further violation of norms.
More widely recognized as a precursor to the labeling approach is the work of social psychologist Edwin Lemert (1912-1996), who approached the issues in terms of “primary” and “secondary” deviance. In Lemert’s (1951) view, most people engage in primary deviance, usually minor, but their violations of norms go unnoticed. Others, however, come to the attention of authorities and are officially designated as deviants. Such designations cause those involved to redefine themselves and then to engage in careers of “secondary” deviance and crime, that is, violations due to official processing. Lemert’s approach, as well as that of Tannenbaum, has strong affinities with Robert K. Merton’s influential discussion of “the self-fulfilling prophecy,” in which “a false definition of the situation [evokes] a new behavior which makes the original false definition come true” (Merton, 1948). The difference is that Merton does not address the issue of selfhood and identity that is central for symbolic interactionists.
The emerging social reaction approach also incorporated influential writings by Harold Garfinkel and by Erving Goffman. Thus, in a short but widely influential article on “Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies” Garfinkel (1956) pointed to the importance of a “dramatic contrast” being drawn between publicly designated deviants and conforming members of groups. Goffman (1962) subsequently examined the social phenomenon of “stigma” and how persons designated as rule violators struggle to manage “spoiled identities.”
Howard Becker then did the most to popularize the social reaction perspective in two bestselling books, Outsiders (1963) and the edited volume The Other Side (1964). Becker’s major contention was that behaviors are not inherently deviant, but only become so as a result of the responses of organized groups. There was also much emphasis in Becker’s two volumes on differential risk of being processed officially, with members of lower classes and racial minorities being much more vulnerable than others. The overall portrait presented in the various essays was the genesis of deviance and crime by authorities responding to violations of norms—a portrait comparable to more recent discussions of hospitals causing illness as a result of treatment. Consequently, many sociologists began to think in terms of rule violators and norm enforcers as co-offenders, or even to view the enforcement system, which was more powerful than individual offenders as “the real problem.”
Shortly after the appearance of Becker’s books, sociologist Kai Erikson (1967) brought out another bestseller, Wayward Puritans. This volume included case analyses of three sets of events in which labels were imposed on perceived norm violators, namely: Anne Hutchinson and the “antinomialist” theological controversy of the 1730s; the “Quaker invasion” of Massachusetts Bay Colony shortly thereafter; and the “witchcraft hysteria” in Salem Village in 1692. Erikson also argued that law enforcers would tend to define enough people as deviant to fill all available space in punitive facilities.
In this way, over the course of three decades, sociologists working in accord with the principles of American pragmatism, as well as those of Mead’s sociology and Blumer’s formulations, portrayed deviance and crime as fundamentally “matters of definition,” not only in laws but, even more importantly in power-based, arbitrary, and often biased practices of enforcement. This approach elicited a critical response from other social scientists such as Ronald Akers (1967), Walter Gove (1970), and Jack Gibbs (1966; 1971). Interestingly, in the development of the social reaction perspective, sociologists created their own “definition of the situation” by portraying rule violators, to a significant degree, as victims of oppressive systems and their agents—an approach that would take root in the field and help generate what more recent critics have called a “victimhood culture” (Campbell and Manning, 2018).
Meanwhile, a rich literature emerged on processes by which persons accused of deviance can avoid formal labeling or self-labeling. The key ideas were “neutralizations” and “accounts.” Thus, in a relatively short but widely influential article, Gresham Sykes and David Matza (1957) offered a theory of juvenile delinquency based on “techniques of neutralization” by which those about to violate social norms gave themselves, in effect, a “time-out” from ordinary obligations. The authors identified five rhetorical techniques that allowed violators to sustain their established self-concepts: denial of responsibility; denial of injury; denial of victim; condemning the condemners; and appeal to higher loyalties.
A decade later, Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman provided a related analysis grounded in what they called the “sociology of talk.” Thus, participants in interaction whose behavior is “subjected to valuative inquiry” may employ self-defensive means called “accounts.” These “linguistic devices,” the authors assert, “are a crucial element in the social order since they prevent conflicts from arising by verbally bridging the gap between action and expectation” (Scott and Lyman, 1968: 46). Two basic types were examined, called excuses and justifications. Excuses involve admissions that an action was wrong, but the participants deny responsibility for it. Justifications admit responsibility but deny that actions (e.g., self-defense) were wrong.
The Scott-Lyman article inspired a large body of empirical work that examined how excuses and justifications were employed by those accused of, or even found guilty of, offenses ranging from student absences to sexual assault and white-collar crime. Most were case studies that analyzed how accounts were used in a “remedial” manner, though a review of the literature (Nichols, 1990) also pointed to “preventive” uses, and also to the presentation of accounts by groups and organizations. The underlying symbolic interactionist insight was that identities are always at risk, a point made perhaps most forcefully by Erving Goffman.
Constructionism
The symbolic interactionist perspective was also a fundamental component of an approach to the study of social problems known as constructionism. Launched by Malcolm Spector and John Kitsuse in 1977, this was initially a reform movement that sought to overthrow dominant approaches, especially functional analysis and value conflict. The authors’ key assertion was that social problems should not be understood as “conditions,” but rather as the “definitional activities” of those making “claims” about “putative conditions.” This argument echoed the earlier statements of labeling theorists about behavior and deviance. And they accorded well with Blumer’s contention that people act toward objects on the basis of meanings assigned to objects. Interestingly, Kitsuse had made contributions to labeling theory, and so his effort to introduce the constructionist model was a rather natural and logical step.
In keeping with the long-standing focus on language dating back to Mead’s writings, Spector and Kitsuse placed great emphasis on terminology and the creation of new categories, such as types of mental illness recognized in the Diagnostic Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. Peter Ibarra and John Kitsuse (1993) subsequently expanded on this point by introducing the idea of “condition-categories” as units of social problems discourse. They took the position that “claims never leave language,” which became known as “strict” constructionism or the “strong reading.”
This provoked a debate about whether sociologists could legitimately presume to know anything at all about actual conditions in the world, versus “putative conditions.” A majority view gradually emerged that focusing on claims and claims-making was too narrow an approach, since the purpose of sociology was to provide understanding of the actual social world (Best, 1993). This view became known as “contextual constructionism,” and it accords with the emphasis dating back to Mead and Blumer that interactions are always “situated” and can only be understood via knowledge of situations. Later commentators (e.g., Nichols, 2003) pointed out the impossibility of a contextless, language-only approach, on the grounds that words have different meanings in different contexts and therefore the language of claims cannot be decoded without presumed contextual knowledge. The “weaker” or contextual reading was more fully in accord with traditional symbolic interactionist principles, while the “strong” or “strict” reading was more phenomenological.
The constructionist movement generated a large research literature, much of it organized in terms of case studies of the creation of a particular social problem (e.g., Best, 1989; 1995). For instance, Joel Best and Kathleen Lowney (1995) traced the emergence of the problem of “stalking,” including the process by which this term came to be favored over earlier ones such as “psychological rape.” The existence of the “problem of stalking” was demonstrated, in the authors’ view, by the passing of anti-stalking laws in virtually all US states within a period of several years. Best (2015) has recently criticized what he regards as an overemphasis on case studies, a pattern, one might say, that reflects Blumer’s earlier emphasis on the singularity of definitional processes.
The constructionist literature also includes treatments of larger dynamics, which accords with the long-established Chicago tradition of examining “collective behavior.” Indeed, there is a widespread tendency to think of social problems in terms of social movements, as though each problem arises from a particular movement. Joseph Gusfield’s (1986) influential book, Symbolic Crusade, a study of the temperance movement, provides an example, as does Making It Work by Valerie Jenness (1993) which analyzes the “prostitutes’ rights” movement.
Constructionists have also considered collective behavior from the critical perspective of “moral panics” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994), that is, as largely irrational overreactions to perceived threats. Thus, historian-sociologist Philip Jenkins (1995) in his study, Using Murder, attempted to trace two phases of a moral panic over serial killing, in which officials asserted the occurrence of several thousand such murders each year. Similarly, Craig Reinarman and Harry Levine (1995) critiqued what they regarded as a panic over the use of “crack” or “rock” cocaine, and they combined the traditional symbolic interactionist emphasis on the imposition of definitions with a conflict-oriented concern over how these were applied to vulnerable racial minorities—a view reminiscent of labeling theorists’ portraits of deviants as society’s victims.
Over a period of several decades, constructionism spread and prospered, but it gradually lost its novelty and it became the target of sharp criticism from conflict-oriented sociologists who reflected a perspective increasingly hegemonic in the field since the late 1960s. For example, a recent conference of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, an organization that had long nurtured constructionism, was devoted to the theme “beyond constructionism.” And at that event the organization’s president launched a direct assault on the perspective, on the grounds that it was largely disconnected from reality and lacked both a concept of power and a sense of actual human suffering (Della Buono, 2015). Similarly, Sarah Crawley (2018) accused constructionists as a group of being “encamped” and cut off, due to their own separatist tendencies, from other important sociological orientations such as feminism.
Structuralism and Indiana
From its earliest days in the thought of Mead and Blumer, symbolic interaction framed social reality in terms of process, rather than structure. The emphasis was mainly on fluidity, creativity, emergence, uniqueness, and unpredictability. But there was also some recognition of stable elements, including human persons, the components of the “me” (i.e., defined roles), collectivities, and what Mead called the “generalized other.” In other words, early symbolic interactionists never claimed (as later radical ethnomethodologists tended to do) that the world had to be, in effect, “created all over again” each and every day.
In the 1980s, building on such recognitions of stability, a number of sociologists, among whom Sheldon Stryker (1924-2016) was the most influential, worked to create a “structural” variant. The programmatic statement for this initiative was Stryker’s 1980 book, Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version, which accepted the existence of patterned interactions that were durable, resistant to change and able to reproduce themselves. There was, in other words, a framework for the dynamics that Mead, Blumer, and their successors had examined, including: “organized systems of interactions and role relationships and … complex mosaics of differentiated groups, communities, and institutions, cross-cut by a variety of demarcations based on class, age, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc.” (Stryker, 2008: 19; see also Stryker, 1982).
Stryker had come into sociology and had enthusiastically embraced Mead’s work in the 1950s, a time when quantitative measurement, the operationalization of variables and the testing of hypotheses via inferential statistics were widespread in the social sciences and when “fieldwork” of the “classic Chicago school” variety had become less common. In this setting, it was natural for Stryker to adopt the attitude, as he reports, that Mead’s ideas should be tested empirically. Like his “Iowa School” counterparts, Stryker (2008: 16) felt strongly that “meaningful operational measures of concepts of the theory could be developed, the derived hypotheses could be empirically examined, and decisions about the validity of the hypotheses could be reached.” Description, in other words, was not enough. A strong and valid theory in the symbolic interactionist tradition also had to be able to predict outcomes accurately.
Stryker (1968) had long been interested in “identity theory,” with particular reference to differential commitment (at various points in time) to various components of the self, which was understood as multifaceted. Following the formulation of the “structural symbolic interactionist” model, he, along with Richard Serpe (1987; Serpe and Stryker, 2011) and other collaborators, sought to link the two issues conceptually and to examine them in empirical research. Stryker also viewed identity theory as an important “bridge” to other closely related approaches, especially affect control theory (e.g., Smith-Lovin, 2007), identity control theory (e.g., Burke, 2004) and identity accumulation theory (e.g. Thoits, 1983), all of which had roots in Mead’s thought. Working within the same conceptual matrix, Jan Stets and her collaborators linked identity theory with environmental sociology (Stets and Biga, 2003), the sociology of emotions (Stets, 2010), and the sociology of morality (Stets and Carter, 2012).
Narratives and Narration
Although some might regard narrative analysis as part of postmodernism or cultural studies, there is a considerable body of empirical research that operates within a symbolic interactionist framework in order to examine how narratives are made and how they are used, with significant consequences for both individual and collective identities. Such work has sometimes connected with studies of mass media, as in research on how news organizations produce “landmark narratives” of crime and deviance through selective coverage of events (Nichols, 1997). Researchers have likewise examined the production and uses of “flawed landmark narratives” including “amoral calculation” in the Ford Pinto case (Lee and Ermann, 1999). More recent work has considered how universities use and sustain narratives about date-rape drugs such as “roofies” (Weiss and Colyer, 2010).
Some studies of narrative have focused on how official investigations interpret problematic events. These include the application of Goffman’s idea of “expression games” to the Congressional investigation of the E. F. Hutton investment firm (Nichols, 1989), as well as an analysis of conversational exchanges in the Iran-Contra affair (Cavender, Jurik, and Cohen, 1993), and Vaughan’s (1997) book-length study of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the “failed O-rings explanation.” A key point has been the struggle over interpretations in “definitional contests” (Nichols, 1991) that are sometimes organized around political factions.
Trends and Future Prospects
Several published analyses have examined the position of symbolic interaction in sociology, as well as its historical development and its future prospects. Thus, in 1962, Manford Kuhn, the leading proponent of the “Iowa School” discussed above, considered the events of the preceding quarter-century in a presidential address (Kuhn, 1964) to the Midwest Sociological Society. In Kuhn’s view the overarching dynamic had been a shift from “the oral tradition” to an “age of inquiry.” In the earlier period, a number of highly interesting and provocative ideas had circulated widely, especially in university coursework, but they had seldom found their way into written form, and had very seldom been presented in well developed, “rounded” theories. The posthumous publication in the mid-to-late 1930s of three of Mead’s works (Mind, Self and Society; Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century; The Philosophy of the Act), Kuhn said, could be regarded as an approximate boundary between the eras.
The more recent period was marked by numerous attempts to develop the perspective by building on various elements of Mead’s thought—often ambiguous and even contradictory—and to measure and test concepts, to formulate hypotheses and explanations of selected problems. These various efforts, Kuhn asserted, could be conveniently categorized as taking either a more “indeterminate” or a more “determinate” approach, both of which could be justified on the basis of Mead’s writings. Kuhn then specified and examined each of the following variants: role theory; reference group theory; social/person perception; self theory; the dramaturgical school; longitudinal studies of socialization and careers; the interpersonal theory of psychiatry; and the Sapir-Whorf-Cassirer approach toward language and culture.
Overall, Kuhn concluded, symbolic interaction had succeeded, though he faulted it both for failing to conceptualize functional relations between selves and others, and also for failing to explain how self-conceptions change over time. Looking toward the quarter-century to come, he predicted an accelerated development of research techniques and a coalescing of the separate sub-theories in the field. Kuhn (1964: 79) felt confident that the interactionist approach “will hold its own against the competition of such major theories as psychoanalysis, the learning theories, and field theory.”
Three decades later, Norman K. Denzin made a case for developing symbolic interaction by linking it to cultural studies and “the politics of interpretation.” Well versed in the history of the perspective, Denzin summarized its past as well as the major debates among its proponents. His own variant, which he called “interpretive interactionism,” was said to rest on three assumptions: (1) that the perspective needed to incorporate elements of poststructural and postmodern theory (e.g., Barthes, Derrida, Foucault); (2) that the interactionist imagination should be merged with critical, feminist, and cultural studies points of view; and (3) that a politics of interpretation must be developed, in order to link the worlds of theory and of practice (Denzin, 1992: xvii). Working with this approach, scholars have addressed the nature of cultural studies; communication as a problematic for interactionists, cultural criticism, and politics.
Denzin has nurtured this project through a series he edits, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, which recently celebrated its fortieth anniversary. Articles published during the past decade sometimes have a more traditional framing, as with Jane Hood’s analysis of “parenting a youthful offender,” Susie’s Scott’s discussion of “intimate deception in everyday life,” and Jeffrey Nash’s examination of women as barbershop singers. There were also contributions on Mead’s field theory, by Norbert Wiley, and on Jane Addams and symbolic interaction, by Mary Jo Deegan. Other recent articles are more reflective of cultural studies, postmodernism, and communication studies. Examples include Anthony Puddephatt’s discussion of Mead in the light of Chomsky’s linguistics, Scott Currie’s analysis of the “semiotics of jazz improvisation,” and Bryant Alexander’s account of a “performative film autocritography.”
Shortly after Denzin’s call for interpretive interactionism, Gary Alan Fine (1993) provided an extensive examination of what he called “the sad demise, mysterious disappearance and glorious triumph” of the approach. Fine attributed symbolic interactionism’s decline to four major processes: fragmentation, expansion, incorporation, and adoption. Fragmentation due to competition between intellectual centers (Chicago, Iowa, University of California at San Diego) and rival paradigms and methodologies (e.g., participant observation versus controlled laboratory experiments) made it hard to identify a core in the perspective. Expansion via linkage to choice theory, gratification research, social ecology, and the development of civilization had a similar effect. Meanwhile, interactionist ideas were blended into movements such as cultural studies. And the widespread adoption of ideas that were symbolic interactionist in their origins made it difficult to distinguish between those who were, or were not, proponents of the approach.
In Fine’s view, the period under consideration had been marked by three fundamental debates: between micro and macro approaches; between an emphasis on agency or on structure; and between realist and interpretivist understandings. Meanwhile, interactionists had made important contributions in several “domains,” including social coordination theory, emotion work and experience (e.g., affect control), the construction of social problems, and the creation of selves (identity theory). He concluded: “if the ultimate goal is to develop the pragmatist approach to social life—a view of the power of symbol creation and interaction—then symbolic interactionism has triumphed gloriously” (Fine, 1993: 81).
A decade later, Fine and Kent Sandstrom offered a related analysis. On the positive side, the authors (2003: 1041) asserted that symbolic interactionism had “become one of the cornerstones of contemporary sociology.” Despite this success, and actually because of it, however, the approach had lost something of its former distinctiveness. In the final decades of the twentieth century the perspective had been expanded and enlivened by works in feminism, neo-Marxism, and postmodernism. It could still enjoy a bright future in the twenty-first century, if its proponents accepted the limited mission of developing a pragmatist understanding. And with such a strategic focus the paradigm would very likely continue to influence related disciplines, including psychology, communication studies, cultural studies, and education.
More recently, Jonathan Turner (2011) has presented a “conceptual outline” for how sociologists might fill in and extend Mead’s approach. In particular, he offers a “more robust” conceptualization of the self, as well as a hierarchical model of “transactional needs.” The self should be seen as including four levels of identity: role identity (the least encompassing); group identity; social identity; and core identity (the most encompassing, and always salient). The hierarchy of transactional needs includes the following: verification of identities; making a profit in the exchange of resources; group inclusion; trust; and facticity (sharing a common intersubjectivity). The development of these proposed ideas will, Turner believes, help to close the conceptual gap between processes operating at the micro, meso, and macro levels.
Lonnie Athens, meanwhile, has developed a more dissident approach that he calls “radical interactionism,” which discard’s Mead’s notions of “the I and the me” and “the generalized other” altogether. Its main premise is the need to go beyond Mead’s view of sociality in order to recognize “domination” as the key process in social life—a view said to be in accord with that of Robert Park. Athens (2007: 141) understands domination as “the construction of social actions through some participants in the social act performing super-ordinate roles, others performing subordinate roles, and everyone assuming the attitudes of ‘others.’” Domination is “a necessary evil,” because social life always involves a division of labor, and it is therefore sheer utopian thinking to imagine social life without compulsion. The best that can be hoped is that domination will be restricted to democratic forms. On the positive side, there is always room for creative activity by individuals that can eventuate in social change. Initially, this consists simply in “soliloquizing” mentally, with an orientation toward a “phantom community,” about new “maxims” to deal with unmet needs. But over time a phantom community can become “customary,” with formerly novel maxims internalized.
The history of symbolic interaction, as well as its future prospects, has also sometimes been presented as autobiographical reminiscences and reflections. Thus, Helen Znaniecka Lopata (2003) has written about the process of becoming a symbolic interactionist gradually, through several phases. As the daughter of Florian Znaniecki, a major figure in the “classic Chicago school,” Lopata became familiar with literature that created a readiness for her subsequent development (Thomas and Znaniecki, 1918-1920). During doctoral studies she participated in the “second Chicago school” (Fine, 1995) whose prominent faculty members included Herbert Blumer, Everett C. Hughes, Louis Wirth, Ernest Burgess, Philip Hauser, Evelyn Kitagama, Nelson Foote, David Riesman, Peter Blau, and Anselm Strauss. This led to an expanded professional network largely anchored in the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI), and to a series of researches organized around the ideas of social roles, sentiments, identities, and self-concept. Reflecting on this journey, Lopata argued for a broadened vision that would go beyond examinations of classic texts and beyond individualized auto-ethnographies to “look carefully at what is happening to other people, not from our own point of view, but from theirs.” The challenge, in her view, is cross-cultural: to listen, for example, “to the voices of the women of Afghanistan and Iran, to learn what meanings they give to what is happening in their homelands” (Lopata, 2003: 167), rather than to assume, from a Western perspective, that wearing traditional costumes is inherently oppressive and that a desire to be liberated from it must be a top priority for those involved. Symbolic interactionists cannot “take the roles” of such others without first understanding the very different worlds of meaning in which they live.
Sheldon Stryker has likewise contributed a brief memoir. Unlike Lopata, however, Stryker recounts a process of competition, conflict, and estrangement between himself as an advocate of a “structural” approach to symbolic interactionism and others with a more orthodox, Blumerian, and processual view. Happily, a reconciliation was eventually reached, and Stryker became a member of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interactionism, as well as a member of the editorial board of the Society’s journal. The rapprochement culminated in Stryker’s receipt of the Mead Award from the SSSI. Reflecting on these events, Stryker speculates that the competing wings might have been drawn together by the appearance of a common adversary, namely, “symbolic interactionists who, enamored of postmodernism, have come to reject the possibility of objective knowledge and study texts rather than behavior” (Stryker, 2003: 105). But with the newfound openness and trust, he concluded, symbolic interactionists have the opportunity to learn from one another and to enrich and improve their work.
In 2012, Norman Denzin’s series, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, devoted an entire issue (volume 38) to “autobiographies of leading symbolic interactionsts.” Its eleven contributors included Lonnie Athens, David Altheide, Paul Atkinson, Kathy Charmaz, Adele Clarke, Gary Cook, Carolyn Ellis, Martyn Hammersley, John Myrton Johnson, Joseph Kotarba, and Laurel Richardson. Cook sounded a traditionalist note in a discussion of “becoming a Mead scholar,” while Ellis spoke of combining “a communicative heart with a sociological eye,” and Johnson recounted “an activist path.”
Conclusion
The distinctively American perspective of symbolic interactionism has developed in a multitude of directions over the past century. It continues to be widely taught, in introductory sociology courses, as well as in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on theory and the history of theory. In addition, the interactionist approach retains a prominent place in the fields of criminology, juvenile delinquency, and deviance. Meanwhile, the SSSI, along with its journal Symbolic Interaction and its annual national conference and Couch-Stone symposium, as well as Norman K. Denzin’s long-running series, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, provide institutional support and continue to nurture the perspective.
It’s also important to note that the perspective has spread internationally, and it is in the international sphere that its potential for growth may be greatest. In Europe, British sociologist Frank Furedi has published on bullying and on “risk and fear” (2018). In France, Veronique Campion-Vincent (2001) has examined narratives of organ theft. In Finland, Tarja Poso (2001) has written about “child protection without children.” Denzin’s series, Studies in Symbolic Interaction (2015), featured “contributions from European symbolic interactionists” including Viola Abernet, Lars-Erik Berg, Danielle Chevalier, Caroline De Mann, Thaddeus Muller, and Roel Pieterman, among others. The perspective has also gained popularity in Asia. For instance, in Japan, Jun Ayukawa has applied interactionist ideas to the issues of smoking and human rights violations (2015), while Takashi Suzuki (2001) and Manabu Akagawa (2015) have published on pornocomics as a social problem.
All of these events seem to justify the optimism expressed by Manford Kuhn, Gary Alan Fine, Kant Sandstrom, Sheldon Styker, Helen Znaniecka Lopata, Michael Katovich, and other well-informed practitioners that symbolic interaction will not only survive, but will continue to flourish in the decades ahead. And, based on the intellectual and social history sketched out here, that flourishing will be dramatically diverse.