people in interaction

people in interaction

Social interaction is defined as the moments we spend with others. It’s guided by social rules and is extremely unique and calculated. It’s creative, back-and-forth, spontaneous, and balanced between inventiveness and predictability. Identities shape our interactions in the form of where we fit in, what roles we play, and if that all makes sense to others. Social interaction usually involves following the norm, which is an active thing. We aren’t normal, we do normalcy because predictability makes the world go around. It’s studied via field experiments. Early scholars of social interaction include Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman, and Harold Garfinkel.

playing by the rules

The norm of reciprocity refers to the idea that we should respond to each other in parallel ways. It demonstrates the strength of social ties and ranks in a hierarchy. The norm of reciprocity is apart of a massive group of social rules, or culturally specific norms, policies, and laws that guide behavior. Social rules can be prescriptive or proscriptive. Folkways are loosely enforced norms, mores tightly enforced, and taboos the most strict norms. Policies and laws often fall into these categories, and are punishable by law. Social sanctions are another way we get others to follow norms. We all reward conformity and punish rule breaking in subtle ways, we even do this to ourselves, which is known as self-sanctioning. Negative sanctions are fended off in the form of accounts, which is an excuse for not following a norm consisting of an acknowledgment and an explanation.

symbolic interactionism

Herbert Blumer was a sociologist and NFL player who coined the term symbolic interactionism. It’s the theory that social interaction depends on the social construction of reality. We respond to the meaning of reality, that meaning is produced through social interaction, and negotiated when we create or struggle over meaning indicated by signifiers. Different settings can change the meaning of interactions. Our behavior in any situation is guided by subtle signals, which, ideally, everyone agrees on the meaning of and acts accordingly. Because interactions are so complex, they’re delicate. When someone fails to acknowledge the situation, recognize the symbols, play their roles, and break rules only with resonant accounts the circumstances can change drastically.

dramaturgy

Erving Goffman studied role play and coined the term dramaturgy. This is the practice of looking at social life as a series of performances in which the set is the situation, the roles are positions in a social interaction, and the props are symbols. Because of dramaturgy we engage in impression management carefully. The impression we want to project is called face, and the effort to maintain that face is called face-work. The face we put out is of our own decision, but we aren’t aware of some faces. Where we’re most aware of our face is called the front stage, and the opposite is the back stage which is mostly private spaces. When we have an inconsistency in face in the front stage, we are out of face. Losing face in this manner is recovered by saving face, either by ourselves or with the help of others.

social identities and social interactions

Marked identities describe those that are always visible, like woman, and unmarked describes the opposite, like man. Status disadvantaged identities are usually marked. In carrying a marked identity, one is always perceived as a representative of one’s identity and stereotypes come first in impressions. Whether an identity is marked or unmarked is determined by situation. Roles are paired with identities, and we learn these associations through socialization. Role-identity match is when one’s role and identity are congruent to our socialized ideas, and role-identity mismatch is the opposite. Interpersonal discrimination can occur when someone is presented with a status disadvantaged identity. Implicit or explicit, discrimination can range from hate crimes to rude treatment. Subtler forms of discrimination are measured by field experiments, which involve testing a hypothesis outside the lab. Field experiments have shown that some of us are more likely to discriminate than others because of how we’re socialized. Low-status identities are most likely to be discriminated against, and the nature of this discrimination depends on how many low-status identities one has, how they intersect, whether one’s roles and identities match, and what situation one is in. Those who are frequently discriminated against must do extra impression management with signifiers to counteract negative impressions of our identities. Ida B. Wells-Barnett studied discrimination and proved that lynching was a tool of white domination. Black people, men specifically, are characterized as dangerous, so they must learn to use social constructs to counter these impressions.

the rules beneath the rules

Harold Garfinkel discovered the implicit rule supporting all other rules: follow the rules. These types of rules are called ethnomethods, a set of culturally specific background assumptions used to make sense of daily life. When we don’t follow ethnomethods we are breaching, or purposefully breaking a social rule in order to test how others respond. Ethnomethods establish shared background knowledge, and when we ignore this we’re breaking a social pact and others become upset.

putting it all together: exploiting the rules of the game

For example, Driscoll Middle School’s football team broke the ethnomethod of playing fair, by not using dramaturgical indications that football was being played actively. In doing this, they tied the game and violated no game rules, but many social rules.