Social order is seen as fluid and open, and that individuals have the capacity to to create new roles and meanings.
Communication is effected through ?significant gestures?, and then self-conscious acts distinguish human behaviour from non- human behaviour.
Humans interpret meaning of other peoples? actions.
For Mead ?it is the self that makes the distinctively human society possible.? (Mead 1934)
Your internal sense of who you are is "I", its spontaneous, inner, creative and subjective.
"Me", which is organized attitude towards others, connects to the wider society. This is more social and determined.
The self is comprised of the ?I? and the ?Me?.
The ?Me? is often referred to as the self-concept or rather how we perceive others to be seeing us.
The ?I? is the subject which thinks and acts, while the ?Me? is a consequence of the individuals awareness of itself as an object existing for others.
?I? is a combination of biological drives and social experiences, and ?Me? comes into existence almost entirely through communication via language.
?I? wants to leave a boring lecture, while ?Me? realizes that this is inappropriate and the lecturer marks my paper.
Your ?Me? put simply is how you think others see you. Are you white, male or female, young or old, well-dressed.
Gender, race, class, status.
Mead argues ?that it is shortly after childhood that the individual internalizes roles, especially the collective role of the group, which he called the " generalized other".? (Mead cited in Taylor et al 1999)
It?s Real Strength
The practical application of the theory and its production of qualitative research.
Becker and Goffman have pioneered research methods that tries ?to get inside?, where the action is and to ?tell it like it is?.
Goffman noticed that people interacting behave much like actors on a stage.
Dramaturgical analysis - the investigation of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance.
Status is the part, role is the script giving dialogue and action for each of the characters.
Goffman
Each individuals performance is ?presentation of the self?, or an individual?s effort to create specific impressions in the mind set of others.
We are constantly giving out information about ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously, to others.
Goffman argued in 1983 that interaction always contains within it a specific order defined by its own distinctive internal properties, (language, symbols, rules and moral obligations) clear boundaries.
This interaction order isn?t simply a reflection of the macro-institutional order but exists in its own right.
It is the argument that interaction contains a moral dimension, trust and tact wit h others and a commitment to sustain order itself.
This is an attempt to answer questions in the area of Power, Authority and to link the micro to the macro.
Micro is linked to macro through Talk.
Talk is key to maintaining the structure of social groups and patterns of social interaction.
Everyday talk is carried out at the level of ritual and politeness.
The individual embodies sacred and moral value.
Many sociologists argue that interaction is hierarchically structured.
Within Bureaucracies for example.
Administrators and managers generate a distinct interaction order that produces meanings and new ideas that will effect the people who work on the factory floor.
Goffman however does not explain sources of motivation nor how individuals believe in certain values while rejecting others.
Ethnomethodology
The order around us is fragile.
To explain this Garfinkel conducted ?breaching experiments?.
Acting as though your home is a hotel.
Disrupting the taken- for-granted routines of everyday life, and bringing to the surface common sense assumptions.
Social order is the practical accomplishment of highly reflexive agents as they make and remake meanings.
This does not unify micro with macro it dissolves the macro.
