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Micro-Sociology  

Symbolic Interactionism & Ethnomethodology  

Questions related to the following lecture  

1998 - Discuss the distinction between theories of social structure and social action in sociological theory.
1998 - Discuss the contribution to sociological theory of GH Mead.
1998 - What do Symbolic Interactionists mean by ?taking the role of the other??
1998 - Some sociologists try to study social action from the point of view of those being studied. Give 3 methods they could use.
 

1999 - Discuss the links between theory and method in interpretative, or phenomenological, approaches.
2000 - Discuss the major characteristics of symbolic interactionism.
2001 - Discuss one of the theories of knowledge in sociology. : interpretivism
2001 - What is a theoretical perspective in sociology? Outline the major characteristics of ONE the following theoretical perspectives: b)symbolic interactionism, d) Ethnomethodology.
Social Action theory  

Structural sociology emphasizes how society pre-exists the individual. That you are born into it.
That you are socialized into conformity.
Social action however reminds us that the social cannot continue unless individuals remake it by acting and interacting.
Do they remake it or merely perpetuate it.
The main problem that structure theorists have with social action theory is that of unintended consequences.
Symbolic Interactionism  

Blumer 1937.
" A theoretical approach which focuses on the role of symbols and language in human interaction." (Bilton et al 1997)
Based on the philosophy of pragmatism.
Knowledge is a collective human product, with no timeless status as truth.
SI is concerned with face to face communication, small scale interaction, social identity and the ?public face? that we present to others.
SI celebrates differences and diversity in social life. It does not judge or condemn, but seeks to understand social life, through direct contact ?in the field?.
This leads to the method of ethnography.
It is a reaction to the work of functionalism, in particular the work of T.Parsons.
It is founded on the notion of the self- conscious acting self.
This self is not pre- formed but must be learned, through the responses of others.
?Looking-glass self? (Cooley 1964)
 

By defining a situation as real, it becomes real in its consequences.
We rely on shared symbols which attach meaning and social significance to objects or actions. (Is this an alter or a dining table?)
Through shared language we get access to the symbols meaning and social expectations.
GH Mead stresses how our self has to develop in a social context through learning and socialisation.
 

Linking Action to Structure  

Micro-sociology is an attempt to link action to structure and uses the notion of the active, human self.
Mead G.H., laid the foundation for social psychology.
His work places emphasis on the analysis of experience in the social.  

Micro-sociology continued...

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