Ml - 3-3 Symbolic Interactionism Norman K. Denzin 1 Bo« piipctf« of symbolic mteractionsm 81 2 rheonw ol agcrtcy and action 82 3 Root hssh motions 82 4 Race and gender 83 r. Kplstemological and conceptual assumptions 83 6 0'lgms: Cooley, James, Mead, Dewey, Blumer 83 7 K lionis: thought 84 8 Recei'i developments the narrative turn 85 B i i|nMiľfKi» and its representations 85 10 Assessing interpretations 85 II D »pull OVtf truth .... i; . oni uiion Hi. Symlxilh mii-i.n tioiiisin is that unique Aim-in Ml sociologu al •nul «nul psychological peispec- live lli.ii . toots to the eatly An pngmittoU |un«, Dewey, Fetrceand Mead. It has lit'.'ii uillixl the loyal opposition In Anient an sociology, the most sociological ot MX i.ii psyilmlngiei, Only recently has this perspective entered the discourses of the other mh:.iI wM-iiiev including anthropology, psy-cholugy ind science studies, where the works of Mead have I »mi |olned with the theories of WUtgtnstiln, Vygotsky and Bakhtin | t0H9|. Hlrréj i.....Kimple, places 'symbolu nun UUoni' at thr Iicnt i>ť psychology, ihowliu rtOM Hives, attitudes, motives, genders and emotloni in 'din unta productions, attribute! IIIOIU nlhCf than mental tntllUS' (Hurt IW2 526). Otbti toctal Kttntlsu aw adopting m Inter* SCIIOnlll Hummed IppKMCh to lite Study <>l lives, idľuniiľ. ind loclal relailonshlpi (MO Dunn IW8j Holstein and Gubrlum 2001); MutoU |9Mi WOty 1994). A relatively new |mir nal. Slliul. Culture, und Atlivity. publishes work itut lonneitsthesymtiottclntcnci.....IMlndll i vvtth silence studies, cultural |»y< Imlng* .ind iliľ Snviw tradition reptesenifd lis rh. ismks nt Vygotsky and others. The |oumal Symbottt tnMmettOn and the research annual .ViWin hi Symbolic Interaction routinely publish work by symbolic interactionists. and rMfflbtff ol tin-Society lor the Study of Symbolic Intcuction Interacttonism has had a rorturcd history in American sociology (see Fine 1991) Many limes lis death has been announced, am) Us pracii-HonCfl maligned, but the pmptctlvt reluses to die, loday It is alive and well, thriving hilts |om n.lis and auits annual incetuigi ind symposia 1 BASIC PRINCIPLES Of SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM iiiľ irtui tymbotk m the phrase symbol)* inlei Action relers li> the underlying llnguhlli hum riaUoni ol human group life, |mi as the w<>n\ Interaction refers to the tact thai people do noi act toward one another, bin Inter« i with eat h 68 30 BjJ A COMPANION TO QUAUTATIVE RESEARCH other. By using the term Interaction symbolic Interaction Is is commit themselves to the study and .malysls o( the developmental course of action that occurs when two or more persons (or agents) with agency (reflexivity) join their Individual lines of action together Into |oint action. 2 THEORIES OF AGENCY AND ACTION The concepts of action and agency are central to interactionist theories of the self and the interaction process. Action references experiences that are reflexively meaningful to the person. Agency describes the loc|ls ol action, whether in the person, in language/or in some other structure or process. At issue is the place of an aulonomous, reflexive individual In the construction of meaningful action. That Is. do persons, as agents, cieale their own experience? Or, Is experience created by a larger entity, or agent? Are agency, meaning and intention in the actor, in the experience, or in the social structure? Do persons, as Karl Marx argued, make history, but not under conditions of their own making? If history goes on behind people's backs, then structures, not persons as agents, make history. If this is the case, then the real object of interactionist enquiry is not the person, or a single individual. Rather, external systems and discursive practices create particular subjectivities, and particular subjective experiences for the individual. Inleractionlsts reject this Interpretation, arguing that experience, strucivire and subjectivity are dlaloglcal processes. Following Glddens's theory of structuration, .ind his concept of the duality of structure, it can be argued that 'the structured properties of social systems are simultaneously the medium and outcome of social nets' (Giddens 1981: 19; emphasis in original). Further, 'all social action consists of social practices, situated in time-space, and organized tn a skilled and knowledgeable fashion by human agents' (1981: 19). Thus does Giddens inieraciionist model overcome the false opposition between action, agency, meaning and structure. Glddens's formulation ,U consistent with symbolic interactionist assumptions, livery Individual is a practical social agent, but human agents are constrained by structural mlcs, by material resources, and by the structural processes connected to class, gender, race, ethnicity, nation and community. 3 ROOT ASSUMPTIONS In its canonical form symbolMilhteiactlonlsm rests on the following root assumptions (see Blumer 1981). 1 'Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them* (Blumer 1969: 2). 2 Tlie meanings of things arise out of the process of social interaction. 3 Meanings are modified through an interpretive process which involves self-reflective individuals symbolically interacting with one another (Blunter 1969: 2). •I Human beings create the worlds of exin-ri-ence in which they live. 5 The meanings of these worlds come from interaction, and they are shaped by the self-reflections persons bring to their situations. 6 Such self-interaction is 'interwoven with social interaction and influences that social Interaction' (Blumer 1981: S3). 7 Joint acts, their formation, dissolution, conflict and merger constitute what Blumer calls the 'social life of a human society!. A society consists of the joint or social acts 'which are formed and carried out by (its) members' (Blumer 1981: 153). 8 A complex interpretive process shapes the meanings things have for human beings. This process is anchored in the cultural world, in the "circuit of culture' (du Gay et al. 1997: 3) where meanings are defined by the mass media, Including advertising, cinema and television, and identities are represented in terms ol salient cultural categories. The basic task of the mass media Is to make the second-hand world we all live in appear to be natural and invisible. Barthes (1957/1972: 11) elaborates, noting that the media dress up reality« giving it a sense of naturalness, so that 'Nature and History [arej confused at every turn.' The prime goals of the mass media complex are to create audience members who: (1} become consumers of the products advertised in the media; while (2) engaging in consumption practices that conform to the norms of possessive individualism endorsed by the capitalist political system; and (3) adhering to a public opinion that is supportive of the strategic polices of the stale (Sniythe 1994: 28S). The audience Is primarily a commodity that the Ml Information technologies produce (Smythe 1994: 268). A final goal of the media Is clear: to I do everything it can lo make consumers as audience members think they are not commodities. Herein lies the importance of cultural narratives and stories that reinforce the epiphanal nature of human existence under late twentieth-century capitalism. These stories give members the illusion of a soul, of structural freedom and free will. Thus do the circuits of culture (production, distribution, representation) implement this system of commodlficatlon. 4 RACE AND GENDER All human experience is racially gendered; that is, filtered through the socially constructed categories of male and female. This system privileges whiteness over blackness. It reproduces ncgailve racial and ethnic stereotypes about dark-skinned persons. It regulates Interracial, inter-ethnic sexual relationships, The gendered categories (male and female) of the racial selí are enacted in daily ritual performances, in the conversations between males and females, and in media representations (see 3.10). These gender categories are performative, established in and through the interaction process. This process of performing gender produces a gendered social order. In these performances there are no originals against which a particular gendered periormance can be |udged. Butler argues that each person constitutes through their interactional performances a situated version of a heterosexual, or non-heterosexual identity. Every periormance Is a masquerade, a copy of the real thing, an Imitation of an imitation. Butler elaborates, 'If het-erosexuality is an impossible imitation of itself, an imitation that performatively constitutes itself as the original, then the imitative parody of "heterosexuaUty" ... is always and only an imitation of an imitation, a copy of a copy, for which there Is no original' (1993: 644). 5 EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ASSUMPTIONS The symbolic Interactionist perspective may be clarified by outlining the empirical and theoretical practices inteiactlonists value and do not value. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM (ea) 1 Interpretative (and symbolic) Interactionists do not Ihlnk general iheorlcs are useful. 2 Inleractionlsts reject totalizing, grand theories of the social; interactionists. like many post-structural (Foucault) and postmodern (Lyotard) theorists, believe in wilting local narratives about how people do things together. 3 Interactionists do not like theories that objectify and quantify human experience. They prefer to write texts that remain close to the actual experiences of the people they are writing about. 4 Interactionists do not like theories that are imported from other disciplines, like the natural sciences or economics (for example, chaos or rational choice theories). 5 Interactionists do not like theories that ignore history, but they are not historical determl-nists. They believe that persons, not inexorable forces, make history, but Ihey understand that the histories that Individuals make may not always be of their own making. tí Interactionists do not like theories that ignore the biographies and lived experiences of interacting Individuals. 7 Interactionists do not believe in asking 'why' questions. They ask, instead, 'how' questions. How, for example. Is a given strip of experience structured, lived and given meaning? These are the things lhal interactionists do not like to do. This means they are often crltl< Ired for not doing what other people think Ihey should do, like doing macro-studies of power structures, or not having clearly defined concepts and terms, or being overly cognitive, or having emergent theories, or being ahistorical and astmctural (see Musolf 1998). Too often these criticisms reflect either a failure to understand what the interactionist agenda is, or the fact that the critics have not read what interactionists have written. / 6 ORIGINS: COOLEV, JAMES, MEAD, DEWEY, BLUMER I now (urn to a brief discussion of ihe origins of this perspective in American social theory (see also Musolf 1998: 20-92; also Holstein and Gubrlum 2000: 17-37; Wiley 1994). Interactionists are cultural romantics. Often tragic and ironic, their vision of self and society stands In a direct line 17 " A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH wilh i he Left romanticism or Ralph Waldo Emerson, Kjtl Marx and William James, from the beginning. Interactionists have been haunted by a Janus-faced spectre. On the one hand, Hie founding theorists aigucd (or the interpretative, subjective study of human experience. On the other hand, they sought to build an objective science of human conduct, a science that would conform to criteria borrowed from the natural sciences. Pragmatism, as a theory of knowing, truth, science and meaning, is central lo the interactton-ist heritage. For Mead, James, Peirce and Dewey, truth is defined in terms or lis consequences for action. What Is true is what works. Pragmatism became a form of cultural criticism for Dewey and James. Dewey's pragmatism celebrated critical intelligence, Implemented llirough the seienlilie method, as the proper mode of scientific enquiry. Um pragmatic tradition, In lis several forms, continues lo the present day (see Denzin 199?: 131; Sirauss 1993b). It remains one of the most viable interpretative philosophical positions now operating in the human disciplines. Cooley contended that the sell of the person arises out of experiences in primary groups, especially the family. Modem societies are shaped by the media. Governmental^ regulated competition is the best mechanism for maintaining the democratic values of a society like the United States. lames argued thai the state of consciousness, m stream of consciousness, is all that the field of psychology needed lo posit. The self, in its principal form of knower or subject (the 'I'), (sal the centre of the person's stale of consciousness. In experience the 'ľ interacts with the 'me', or the self as object. For James the person has as many selves as he or she has social relationships. Mead turns Cooley and James on their heads. For him the self is not mentalistic. Self and mind are social and cognitive processes, lodged in the ongoing social world. Self is a social object which lies in the field of experience. It is stnicrured by rhe principle of sociality, or the taking of the attitude of the other in a social situation. The self can be scientifically studied, like an object in the physical sciences. Rejecting Introspection because it Is not scientific, he argued fora view of the self and society which joins these two terms In a reciprocal process of interaction. Ills key term was 'the act', which replaces James's concept of stream of experience. BUimet (1969) turns Mead into a sociologist. Offering a view of society that derives from Mead's picture of the social act, he introduced the concepls of joint action and acling mill to describe the interactions that exreiwl from dyads to complex Institutions. His self is an Inlei-pretative process, and his society (after 1'ark and Thomas) is one built on the play of power, interest, group position, collective action and social protest. He applied Mead and Park to the study of fashion, film, racial prejudice, collective behaviour and the industrialization process. With Mead, and Blumer's extension of Mead, the interaction tradition decisively moves away fiom the interpretative and phenomenological suggestions of Cooley and James. It enters a confused phase, as noted above, which attempts, though unsuccessfully, to become naturalistic, sub|ective and scientific (In 1974 in Frame Analysis Goffman attempted to reclaim and then refute the neglected James and phenomenological tradition: see 2.2.) 7 VARIETIES OF INTERACTIONIST THOUGHT Symbolic interactionism comes in multiple varieties. These include: pragmatic, feminist, phenomenological and constructionist varieties. Diversity is not just theoretical. At the methodological level, interact ionists employ a variety of interpretative, qualitative approaches, including autoethnographies, narratives of the self, structural, aitlculatlve, semlotic and practical ethnographies, grounded theory, the biographical, lite history method, performance and feminist ethnographies, more traditional interviewing and participant observation practices, creative interviewing, the interpretative practices hinted at by Blumer, conversation analysis, ethnographic and laboratory searches for generic principles of social life, and historical studies of cMJizatlonal processes. Substantively, inteiactlonists have made major contributions to many areas of social science. An incomplete list would include the fields of deviance, social problems, collective behaviour, medical sociology, the emotions, the arts, social organization, race relations and Industrialization, childhood socialization, fashion, film, the mass media, family violence and small groups. In short, there are many styles and versions of symbolic interactionism and these variations arc displayed across the fields of sociology and social psychology. fl RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: THE NARRATIVE TURN Contemporary symbolic Inteiactlonists emphasize die reflexive, gendered, situated nature of human experience. They examine the place of language and multiple meanings in interactional contexts (see Holstein and Gubrium 2000). This reflexive, or narrative concern is also evidenced in other points of view, from phenomenology (see 3.1), to hermeneuttcs (see 3.5), semiotics, psychoanalysis (see 5.20), feminism (see 3.10), narratology (see 5.11), cultural, discursive and dialogical psychology (see 5.19), interpretive sociology and cultural studies (see 3.9). This narrative turn moves in two directions at the same Ume. Fiisi, symbolic Interactionists tend other theorists) formulate and offer various .iiti.inv, versions, oi torie iboui how the social world operates. This form of narrative Is usually called a theory, for example Freud's theory of psychosexual development (see 5.20). On this, Charles Lernen reminds us that sociolog)' is an act of the imagination, that the various sociologies are 'stories people tell about what they have figured out about their experiences in social life' (Lernen 1997; 14). This is how interactionism is best understood: various stories about the social world, stories people tell themselves about their lives and the worlds they live In, stories that may or may not work. Second, symbolic inleractlonists study narratives and systems of discourse, suggesting lhat these Structures give coherence and meaning to everyday life. (A system of discourse is a way of repiesenllng the world.) Systems of discourse both summarize and produce knowledge about the world (Foucault 1980: 27). These discursive systems are seldom just true or false. In the world of human affairs truth and facts are constructed in different ways. Their meanings are embedded in competing discourses. As such they are connected to struggles over power, or regimes of truth; that is, to who has the power to determine what is true and what is not true (Hall 1996c: 205). 9 EXPERIENCE AND ITS REPRESENTATIONS It is not possible to study experience directly, so symbolic Interactionists study how narratives, connected to systems of discourse (interviews, SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM (85 stories, rituals, myths), represents experience. These representational practices are nan.illve constructions. The meanings and forms o( everyday experience are always given in narrative representations- These representations are texts that are performed, stories told to others. Bruner is explicit on this point: representations must "be performed to be experienced' (1984: 7). Hence symbolic interactionists study performed texts, rituals, stories told, songs sung, novels read, dramas performed. Paraphrasing Bruner (1984: 7), experience is a performance, and reality is a social construction. The politics of representation Is basic to the study of experience. How a thing Is represented involves a struggle over power and meaning. While social scleniists have traditionally privileged experience Itself, it Is now understood thai no life, no experience can be lived outside of some system of represenlatlon (Hall I996d: 473). Indeed, 'there is no escaping ... the politics of representation' (Hall 1996d: 473; see 5.22). Symbolic interactionists are constantly constructing interpretations about the world. All accounts, 'however carefully tested and supported are, in the end, authored' (Hall, 1996a: 14). Interactionist explanations reflect the point of view of the author. They do not carry the guarantee of truth and objectivity. For example, feminist scholars have repeatedly argued (rightly we believe) that the methods and aims of positMstic social psychology are gender-biased, that they reflect patriarchal beliefs and practices (see 3.10). in addition, the traditional experimental methods o( social psychological enquiry reproduce Ihese biases. 10 ASSESSING INTERPRETATIONS The narrative turn and the feminist critique lead interactionists to be very tentative in terms of the arguments and positions they put forward. It is now understood that there is no final, or authorized version of the truth. Still, there are criteria of assessment that should be used. Interactionists are 'committed l<> providing sys-temaiie, rigorous, coherent, comprehensive, Conceptually clear, we) I-evidenced accounts, Which make their underlying theoretical structure and value assumptions clear to readers ... [still| we cannot deny the ultimately interpretive character of the social science enterprise' (Hall 1996a: 14). (e*) A COMPANION TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH Interpretive interactionists (see Dcnzin 2000) seek an existential, interpretive social science that offers a blueprint for cultural criticism. Tills criticism Is grounded in the specific worlds made visible in the research process. It understands that all enquiry is theory- and value-laden. There can be no objective account of a culture and its ways. The ethnographic, the aesthetic and the political can never be neatly separated. Qualitative enquiry, like art, is always political. A critical, civic, literary form or qualitative enquiry is one that should meet four criteria. It must evidence a mastery Éof literary craftsmanship, the art of good writing. It should present a well-plotted, compelling, -but minimalist narrative. This narrative will be based on realistic, natural conversation, with a focus on memorable, recognizable characters. These characters will be located in well-described, 'unforgettable scenes' (Ford 1998: 1112). Second, the work should present clearly identifiable cultural and political issues, including injustices based on the structures and meanings of race, class, gender and sexual orientation. Third, the work should articulate a politics of hope. It should criticize how things are and imagine how they could be different, finally, it will do these things through direct and indirect symbolic and rhetorical means. Writers who do these tilings are fully immersed in the oppressions and injustices of their time. They direct their ethnographic energies to liiglier. utopian, morally sacred goals. The truth of these new texts is determined pragmatically, by their truth effects, by the critical, moral discourse they produce, by the 'empathy they generate, the exchange of experience they enable, and the social bonds they mediate' (Jackson 1998: 180). The power of these texts is not a question of whether 'they mirror the world as it "really" is' (Jackson 1998: 180). The world is always already constructed through narrative texts. Rorty (1979) is firm on this point. There is no mirror of nature. The world as it is known is constructed through acts of representation and interpretation. Finally, this performative ethnography searches for new ways to locate and represent the gendered, sacred self in its ethical relationships to nature. An exploration of other forms of writing is sought, including personal diaries, nature writing and performance texts anchored In the natural world. 11 DISPUTES OVER TRUTH There are many in the interaction)« community who reject the narrative turn (as outlined above) and what it implies for interpretive work. These critics base their arguments on six beliefs: 1 The new wilting is not scientific, therefore it cannot be part of the ethnographic project. 2 The new writers are moralists; moral judgements are not part of science. 3 The new writers have a faulty epistemology; they do not believe In disinterested observers who study a reality that is independent of human action. 4 The new writing uses fiction; this is not science, it is art. 5 The new writers do not study lived experience which is the true province of ethnography. Hence, the new writers are not participant observers 6 The new writers are postmodernists, and this is irrational, because postmodernism is fatalistic, nativistic, radical, absurd and nihilistic. These six beliefs constitute complexTdlscursive systems; separate literatures are attached to each. Taken together, they represent a formidable, yet dubious critique of the new Inter-actionist project. They make it clear that there are no problems with the old ways of doing research. Indeed, the new ways create more problems then they solve. These beliefs serve to place the new work outside science, perhaps in the humanities, or the arts. Some would ban these persons from academia altogether. Others would merely exclude them from certain theory groups, that is from symbolic intcractionism. 12 CONCLUSION To summarize, symbolic interactionism offers a generic theory of action, meaning, motives, emotion, gender, the person and social structure. This theory has relevance for all of the human disciplines, from psychology, to sociology, history, anthropology and political science. Thus do interactionists study the intersections of interaction, biography and social structure in particular historical moments.