5. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
This perspective relies on the symbolic meaning that people
develop and rely upon in the process of social interaction.
Symbolic interaction theory analyzes society by addressing the
subjective meanings that people impose on objects, events, and behaviors.
Subjective meanings are given primacy because it is believed that people
behave based on what they believe and not just on what is objectively true.
6. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
Thus, society is thought to be socially constructed through
human interpretation. People interpret one another’s behavior
and it is these interpretations that form the social bond. These
interpretation are called the “definition of the situation”.
7.
8. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
Some fundamental aspects of our social experience and identities, like race and
gender, can be understood through the symbolic interactionist lens. Having no biological
bases at all, both race and gender are social constructs that function based on what we
believe to be true about people, given what they look like.
We use socially constructed meanings of race and gender to help us decide who
to interact with how to do so, and to help us determine, sometimes inaccurately, the
meaning of a person’s words or actions.
9.
10. Mead’s approach to symbolic interaction rested on
three basic premises:
The first is that people act toward the things they encounter on the basis of what those
things mean to them. (Things, in this context, refer not just to objects, but also to
people, activities, and situations).
Second, we learn what things are by observing how other people respond to them,
which is through social interaction.
Third, as a result of ongoing interaction, the sounds (or words), gestures, facial
expressions, and body postures we use in dealing with others acquire symbolic meanings
that are shared by people who belong to the same culture.
11. CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Another important concept that has long been used by symbolic interactionist is
the looking-glass self. This concept was developed by the early symbolic interactionist
theorist Charles Horton Cooley. The basic notion of the looking-glass self can be
summed up as “We see ourselves as others see us”.
Three main component:
1. We imagine how we must appear to others.
2. We imagine the judgment of that appearance.
3. We develop our self through the judgments of others.
