interactionism/action theories

• Interactionism


  One of the action theories, made up from several different theorists, sees individuals as having free will and focusses on interactions between them in society
• Interactionism


  • Investigates how signs, symbols and interactions create meaning through how they are interpreted
  • Also known as 'micro' sociology due to the focus on small scale interactions
• Mead


  Developed the beginnings of Interactionalism around the middle of the 20th century, was a philosopher who applied his ideas about the mind and the self to sociology, used the ideas of 'symbols vs instincts' to distinguish human interactions from animal interactions
• Blumer


  Using Mead's ideas, devised the theory of symbolic interactionalism which focuses on trying to understand the meanings that people give to symbols during social interaction, symbols could be anything- words, gestures, actions, three main principles: our actions are based on the meanings we give to symbols, the meanings we give to symbols are based on our own experiences of the world, these meanings can change – one 'symbol' can have a variety of possible meanings
• Labelling theory


  One type of 'interaction' between people is labelling, where individuals might internalize these labels and begin to act upon them- when this happens it is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy, this reinforces others labels of the individual and becomes a master status
• Looking glass self


  According to Cooley, individuals understand who they are through the way others react to them, other peoples reactions can tell us what they think about us, Cooley argues that their reactions are telling the truth about ourselves, interactions with others can influence our self-concept (our idea of ourselves) and help us understand who we are
• Dramaturgical theory


  Goffman uses the analogy of drama to explain how we interact with others, he says that during different social interactions we are performing our 'self' as if we are on stage, different situations call for different 'roles' in which we need to follow different 'scripts' of 'behaviour', we can adjust our performance to portray a particular role based on the impression we want to leave on our audience- this is called impression management, our true and authentic self is backstage
• Becker's case study


  • Howard Becker aimed to investigate why some pupils achieved more than others at school, he interviewed 60 Chicago high school teachers to find out more about their interactions with the pupils, and how the teachers interpreted or gave meaning to particular students, he concluded that teachers were labelling students as 'good' or 'bad' and treating them based on their label, the students then internalised their label, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Strengths of interactionism


  • It is less deterministic than other theories that take a structural approach
  • Doesn't view people as passive puppets whose behaviours are shaped by structures in society
  • Acknowledges the role of the individual in creating society through the meanings they give to interactions
  • Interactionism's focus on the individual is more relevant to us today as our current social world is more individualistic
  • Changed the way in which sociological research is conducted
  • It has been used to investigate the 'underdogs' of society, to try to gain a better understanding of those labelled as deviant
• Weaknesses of interactionism


  • Still a little bit deterministic as it assumes that concepts like meanings and labels influence the behaviour of individuals, rather than us having total free will
  • Ignores the impact of structures in wider society that might shape social behaviour, e.g. patriarchy, capitalism, by focusing on the individual and ignoring not wider society, it is more of a psychological approach
  • The methods interactionists use aren't always useful, qualitative methods e.g. interviews are often small-scale and may not be representative, they are also based upon interpretations of researchers that might be biased
• they are micro, anti-deterministic, anti-structural and interpretivist- qualitative methods
• differences between social action and structural theories-micro v macro anti deterministic v deterministic

  2 features of action theories- micro, anti deterministic

  2 strengths of social action theories- highlights importance of a micro approach in studying individual meanings- webers social action theory. they have also led to the development of interpretivist methods- verstehen, validity, qualitative

  2 limitations of social action theories- doesn't consider wider structural factors, interpretivist methods- not reliable or representative