SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

symbolic interactionism

• How do humans interact with language and symbols to shape our identity and understand the world

• Societies shape people and people shape societies 

symbolic interactionism looks at

1. Focus on interpersonal communication in microlevel social settings

2. Emphasizes social life is possible only bc ppl attach meaning to things

3. Stresses that people help to create their social circumstances, not merely react to them

4. Increases our understanding and tolerance of people who may be different from us 

Max weber and the protestant ethic

• Focused on the idea of salvation of calvinism

  • God choose a limited number of people to go to heaven 

  • To go to heaven, you need to contribute to the community by working, saving, and reinvesting

• Had the belief that religious doubts can be reduced and a state of grace is ensured, if people work diligently and live ascetically

  • Unintended effect of increasing work, which results in saving and investing, this stimulating capitalist growth 

  • Weber states → contributing to your community and living below your means meant making more ans saving more, which they then put into investments and fuel the capitalist ideas

• Shows early capitalism forming  

George Herbert Mead

• An individual’s sense of self is formed in the course of interaction with other people

  • We learn who we are by taking the role of other people as we interact with then and by seeing ourselves as they see us 

  • Ex. identical twins are still different as they interact with different people and building our identity by how they see us 

Erving goffman

• People present themselves to others in everyday life to appear in the best light 

  • Compares social interaction to a staged play → includes front stage, back stage, defined roles, and many props

Social constructionism

• Sub-tradition in symbolic interactionism 

• Argues that when people interact, they assume things are innate but is actually held up by social processes

• Ex. gender norms: thought to be innate, but many different cultures will portray gender norms differently to eachother