复旦大学西方社会思想史课件11 Symbolic Interactionism

1、 Symbolic Interactionism ContentCooley: Looking-glass self and social selfThomas: the definition of the situationMead: play, game and the generalized otherReferences for Erving Goffman Cooley: Looking-Glass SelfA social self might be called the reflected or looking-glass self: each to each a looking

2、-glass, reflects the other that doth pass.As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in anothers mind s

3、ome thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it.Three Principal Elements of Self-IdeaThe imagination of our appearance to the other person;The imagination of his judgment of that appearance and some sort of self-feeling, such as pr

4、ide or mortificationThomas: Definition of the SituationThe higher animals, and above all man, have the power of refusing to obey a stimulation which they followed at an earlier time. Response to the earlier stimulation may have had painful consequences and so the rule or habit in this situation is c

5、hanged. We call this ability the power of inhibition, and it is dependent on the fact that the nervous system carries memories or records of past experiences. At this point the determination of action no longer comes exclusively from outside sources but is located within the organism itself. Prelimi

6、nary to any self-determined act of behavior there is always a stage of examination and deliberation which we may call the definition of the situation. And actually not only concrete acts are dependent on the definition of the situation, but gradually a whole life-polity and the personality of the in

7、dividual himself follow from a series of such definitions. Mead: Play, the Game, and the Generalized otherThe fundamental difference between the game and play is that in the latter the child must have the attitude of all the others involved in that game. The attitudes of the other players which the

8、participant assumes organize into a sort of unit, and it is that organization which controls the response of the individual. The illustration used was of a person playing baseball. Each one of his own acts is determined by his assumption of the action of the others who are playing the game. What he

9、does is controlled by his being everyone else on that team, at least in so far as those attitudes affect his own particular response. We get then an “other” which is an organization of the attitudes of those involved in the same process.Play, the Game, and the Generalized otherThe organized communit

10、y or social group which gives to the individual his unity of self may be called “the generalized other.” The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community. Thus, for example, in the case of such a social group as a ball team, the team is the generalized other in so far as

11、it enters-as an organized process or social activity-into the experience of any one of the individual members of it“I” and “me”The “I” is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the “me” is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes. The attitudes of the

12、others constitute the organized “me”, and then one reacts toward that as an “I”. The self is the ability to take oneself as an object. Again, the self arises within the social process. The general mechanism of the self is the ability of people to put themselves in the place of others, to act as othe

13、rs act and to see themselves as others see them. Mead traces the genesis of the self through the play and game stages of childhood. Especially important in the latter stage is the emergence of the generalized other. The ability to view oneself from the point of view of the community is essential to

14、the emergence of the self as well as of organized group activities. The self also has two phases- the “ I “, which is the unpredictable and creative aspect of the self, and the “ me “, which is the organized set of attitudes of others assumed by the actor. Social control is manifest through the “me”

15、, while the “I” is the source of innovation in societyThe Priority of the SocialWe are not, in social psychology, building up the behavior of the social group in terms of the behavior of separate individuals composing it; rather, we are starting out with a given social whole of complex group activit

16、y, into which we analyze (as elements ) the behavior of each of the separate individuals composing it. We attempt, that is, to explain the conduct of the social group, rather than to account for the organized conduct of the social group in terms of the conduct of the separate individuals belonging t

17、o it. For social psychology, the whole (society) is prior to the part (the individual), not the part to the whole; and the part is explained in terms of the whole, not the whole in terms of the part or parts. Symbolic Interactionism: Basic Principles1. Human being, unlike lower animals, are endowed

18、with the capacity for thought.2. The capacity for thought is shaped by social interaction.3. In social interaction, people learn the meanings and the symbols that allow them to exercise their distinctively human capacity for thought.4. Meanings and symbols allow to carry on distinctively human actio

19、n and interaction.5. People are able to modify or alter the meanings and symbols that they use in action and interaction on the basis of their interpretation of the situation6. People are able to make these modifications and alterations because, in part, of their ability to interact with themselves,

20、 which allows them to examine possible course of action, assess their relative advantages and disadvantages, and then choose one. 7. The intertwined patterns of action and interaction make up groups and societiesThree Premises of Symbolic InteractionismSymbolic interactionism rests in the last analy

21、sis on three simple premises. The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them. Such things include everything that the human being may note in his world-physical objects, such as trees or chairs, other human beings, such as a mother

22、 or a store clerk; categories of human beings, such as friends or enemies; institutions, as a school or a government; guiding ideas, such as individual independence or honesty; activities of others, such as their commands or requests; and such situations as an individual encounters in his daily life

23、. The second premise is that the meaning of such thing is derived from, or arise out of, the social interaction that one has with ones fellows. The third premise is that these meanings are handled in , and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he e

24、ncounters Herbert BlumerNature of social interactionSymbolic interactionism does not merely give a ceremonious nod to social interaction. It recognizes social interaction to be of vital importance in its own right. This importance lies in the fact that social interaction is a process that forms huma

25、n conduct instead of being merely a means or a setting for the expression or release of human conduct. Put simply, human beings in interacting with one another have to take account of what each other is doing or is about to do; they are forced to direct their own conduct or handle their situations i

26、n terms of what they take into account. Thus, the activities of others enter as positive factors in the formation of their own conduct; in the face of the actions of others one may abandon an intention or purpose, revise it , check or suspend it , intensify it, or replace it. The actions of others e

27、nter to set what one plans to do, may oppose or prevent such plans, may require a revision of such plans, and may demand a very different set of such plans. One has to fit ones own line of activity in some manner to the actions of others. The actions of others have to be taken into account and canno

28、t be regarded as merely an arena for the expression of what one is disposed to do or sets out to do. Nature of objectsObjects (in the sense of their meaning) must be seen as social creation-as being formed in and arising out of the process of definition and interpretation as this process takes place

29、 in the interaction of people. The meaning of anything and everything has to be formed, learned, and transmitted through a process of indication-a process that is necessarily a social process. Human group life on the level of symbolic interaction is a vast process in which people are forming, sustai

30、ning, and transforming the objects of their world as they come to give meaning to objects. Objects have no fixed status except as their meaning is sustained through indications and definitions that people make of the objects. Nothing is more apparent than that objects in all categories can undergo c

31、hange in their meaning.The human being as an acting organismSymbolic interactionism recognizes that human beings must have a makeup that fits the nature of social interaction. The human being is seen as an organism that not only responds to others on the non-symbolic but as one that makes indication

32、s to others and interprets their indications. He can do this, as Mead has shown so emphatically, only by virtue of possessing a “self”. Nothing esoteric is meant by this expression. It means merely that a human being can be an object of his own action. Thus, he can recognize himself, for instance, a

33、s being a man, young in age, a student, in debt, trying to become a doctor, coming from an undistinguished family and so forth. In all such instances he is an object to himself; and he acts toward himself and guides himself in his actions toward others on the basis of the kind of object he is to him

34、selfAn acting organismInstead of being merely an organism that responds to the play of factors on or through it, the human being is seen as an organism that has to deal with what it notes. It meets what it so notes by engaging in a process of self-indication in which it makes an object of what it no

35、tes, gives it a meaning, and uses the meaning as the basis for directing its action. Its behavior with regard to what it notes is not a response called forth by the presentation of what it notes but instead is an action that arises out of the interpretation made through the process of self-indicatio

36、n. In this sense, the human being who is engaging in self-interaction is not a mere responding organism but an acting organism-an organism that has to mold a line of action on the basis of what it takes into account instead of merely releasing a response to the play of some factor on its organizatio

37、n.Nature of human actionThe capacity of the human being to make indications to himself gives a distinctive character to human action. It means that the human individual confronts a world that he must interpret in order to act instead of an environment to which he responds because of his organization

38、. He has to cope with the situations in which he is called on to act, ascertaining the meaning of the actions of others and mapping out his own line of action in the light of such interpretation. He has to construct and guide his action instead of merely releasing it in response to factors playing o

39、n him or operating through him. He may do a miserable job in constructing his action, but he has to construct it.Symbolic Interactionism: Basic PrinciplesCapacity for thought Individuals in human society were not seen as units that are motivated by external or internal forces beyond their control, o

40、r within the confines of a more or less fixed structure. Rather, they were viewed as reflective or interacting units which comprise the societal entityThinking and interaction People possess only a general capacity for thought. This capacity must be shaped and refined in the process of social intera

41、ction, socialization. Thinking shapes the interaction process. In most interaction, actors must take account of others and decide if and how to fit their activities to thers Symbolic Interactionism: Basic PrinciplesLearning meanings and symbols People learn symbols as well as meanings in social inte

42、raction. Whereas people respond to signs unthinkingly, they respond to symbols in a thoughtful manner. Symbols are social objects used to represent whatever people agree they shall represent. symbols are crucial in allowing people to act in distinctively human way. Because of the symbol, the human b

43、eing “ does not respond passively to a reality that imposes itself but actively creates and re-creates the world acted in” What are symbols? Language is the most important and a vast system of symbolsReferences and Topics for Class PresentationReference: Erving Goffman on Dramaturgy from: /wiki/Ervi

44、ng_GoffmanTopic: Criticisms on Symbolic InteractionismReference for Goffmans Dramaturgical Perspective and BooksGoffmans greatest contribution to social theory is his formulation of symbolic interaction as dramaturgical perspective in his 1956 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, For Goff

45、man, society is not homogeneous. We must act differently in different settings. The context we have to judge is not society at large, but the specific context. Goffman suggests that life is a sort of theater, but we also need a parking lot and a cloak room: there is a wider context lying beyond the

46、face-to-face symbolic interaction. Throughout Presentation of Self, Goffman seems to perceive the individual as nothing more than a cog responsible for the maintenance of the social world by playing his or her part. In fact, he refers to the self as a peg upon which something of a collaborative manu

47、facture will be hung for a time. The Presentation of Self in Everyday LifeThis was Goffmans first and most famous book. It was also the first book to treat face-to-face interaction as a subject to study in the sociological aspect. This book received the American Sociological Associations MacIver awa

48、rd in 1961. Goffman treated this book as a kind of report in which he frames out the theatrical performance that applies to face-to-face interactions. He believed that when an individual comes in contact with other people, that individual will attempt to control or guide the impression that others m

49、ight make of him by changing or fixing his or her setting, appearance and manner. At the same time, the person that the individual is interacting with is trying to form and obtain information about the individual. Goffman also believed that all participants in social interactions are engaged in cert

50、ain practices to avoid being embarrassed or embarrassing others. This led to Goffmans dramaturgical analysis. Goffman saw a connection between the kinds of acts that people put on in their daily life and theatrical performances. In social interaction, like in theatrical performance there is a front

51、region where the “actors” (individuals) are on stage in front of the audiences. This is where positive aspect of the idea of self and desired impressions are highlighted. There is a back region or stage which can also be considered as a hidden or private place where the individual can be themselves

52、and get rid of their role or identity in societyInteraction RitualThis book is a collection of six of Goffmans essays; the first four essays were published around the 1950s, the fifth is published in 1964, and the last essay was to finish the collection. His six essays are “On Face-work”, “Embarrass

53、ment and Social Organization”, “The Nature of Deference and Demeanor”, “Alienation from Interaction”, Mental Symptoms and Public Order” and “Where the Action Is”. Goffmans first essay, “On Face-work, focused on the concept of face, which is the positive image of self that individuals have when inter

54、acting with others. Goffman believed that face “as a sociological construct of interaction, is neither inherent in nor permanent aspect of the person”. Once an individual gives out a positive self image of themselves to others they then feel a need to keep or live up to that set image. When individu

55、als are inconsistent with how they project themselves in society, they risk being embarrassed or discredited, therefore the individual remains consistently guarded, making sure that they do not show themselves in an unfavorable way to others.Frame AnalysisThis book was Goffmans way of trying to explain how conceptual frames structu