Symbolic Interactionism Essay

In the United States and in several other countries around the world, many people recognize Wal-Mart for being a great place to shop for any and every household item on the market. However, sociologist find Wal-Mart to be a bit more than just a one-stop shop for everyday items. Sociologist use different perspectives to view society and its functions to evaluate the “why’s” and “what’s” within a society. The two main perspectives or theories used by sociologists to analyze society are macrosociology and microsociology, but more specifically: Functionalism, Conflict Theory, and Symbolic Interactionism.

Internationally the act of deviance is being practiced daily. Sometimes is knowingly and unknowingly, the culture, or the society norms. Right or wrong is a prospective, deviance basically a judgmental call. “It is important to remember that when sociologists use the term deviant they are making a social judgment, never a moral one” (Ferris, Stein page 156.) There are three way that you can view deviance from a sociologist’s standpoint, which are, Functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. All three allow us to take an outlook on how to view the act of deviance.

Many sociologists argue that theoretical issues are the most important factors to affect choice of method. Theoretical issues refer to what we think society is like and if we can obtain an accurate and truthful picture of it. There are four different concerns regarding theoretical issues which influence sociologist’s choice of research methods. Validity is a method that gives a true or genuine picture of what something is really like, which helps the researcher easily find out the truth. Sociologists argue that the use of qualitative methods such as Participant Observation gives a more valid, truthful account as it

Another example of Symbolic Interaction Theory in this movie occurs when the teachers at Wingate converse about Michael’s academic performance. Four teachers are sitting around a table in a conference room talking about how they always hate when admissions allow students to attend their private school, who they can’t help. “They are just setting him up to fail,” they say. The teachers think that Michael is not even the least bit intelligent and will fail their classes. In the years before Michael was allowed into private school, he had

Everyday thousands of senior citizens and people with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia suffer from abuse by a caregiver. Most of the abuse is in the form of emotional or physical abuse, but there are also a number of different types of abuse including financial abuse. The abuse can either take place in a medical setting such as a nursing home or hospital, or it can also be done by the victim’s own family members. These senior citizens are mostly targeted due to the fact that they are mentally incapacitated; they do not have a very strong short term memory, and sometimes they do not have the ability to talk to another individual about how their caregiver has been abusing them.

The movie, Shrek, displays several examples of symbolic interactionism through fictional creatures. The symbolic interactions in this movie explain the relationships between ogres and society, ogres and fairytale creatures, and fairytale creatures and society, as odd as they may be in the fictional world. The founders of symbolic interactionism, Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead, defined this perspective as “symbols-things to which we attach meaning-are the keys to understanding how we view the world and communicate with one another.”

Symbolic interaction theory emerged in the early 1900s and is still one of the more frequently used theories in the family studies (Smith & Hamon, 2012). The theory assumes that people have different interpretations of situations due to their personal experiences (Smith & Hamon, 2012). By looking at the behaviors of individuals, symbolic interaction theory explains how multiple people have different reactions to the same situation (Smith & Hamon, 2012).

Deviance in sociology is defined as behaviour that violates or goes against the cultural norm –being non-normative (Henslin et al., 2013)

Far From Heaven showed that the perfect fifties family could easily go against the norm. The film raises questions about the accuracy of the stereotypical depictions of companionate marriages, and the commonality of the situations the two leading characters find themselves in. Commonly found concepts included courtship, family structure, and gender roles. By further reviewing those concepts as well as including an application of content to the sociological perspectives of functionalism and symbolic interactionism, the tensions of the movie are brought to the surface. These conflicts reflect both the era in which Far From Heaven was set and the time when it was made.

Michael and his family would be placed under the sociological perspective of symbolic interactionism. In the beginning of the movie, Leigh Anne noticed Michael walking down the road while he was shivering in the cold. After talking to him for a short while, she learned about his situation and opened up her home to him. This interaction is when Michael first felt love and warmth from Leigh Anne. In the movie, Michael's background and family were driven by poverty. His mother was accustomed to drugs and alcohol. He did not know who his biological father was and he was homeless. Michael showed that he was very self aware; he was shy, distant and wasn't as open as other people. He knew that society viewed him differently and began to see himself

Sociologists analyse social phenomena at different levels and from different perspectives. From concrete interpretations to sweeping generalizations of society and social behaviour, sociologists study everything from specific events, the micro level of analysis of small social patterns, to the big picture, the macro level of analysis of large social patterns. Sociologists today employ three primary theoretical perspectives: the symbolic interactions perspective, the functionalist perspective, and the conflict perspective. These perspectives offer sociologists theoretical paradigms for explaining how society influences people, and vice versa. Each

In the word of sociology there are a couple of ways that sociologists are able to collect data. The scientific method is a method that a massive amount of scientist use to acquire data. This method is very clear cut and easily organized, but since sociology is such a diverse and complicated subject many sociologist use and prefer different data retrieval methods. Surveys are one of the most common way to gather data only because they are simple and easy to get done. One of the more exciting ways to gather data is field research. Learning about people and groups is a little hard without first hand experience, but this method doesn't really answer the question “why do people do that?” therefore, field research is not optimal. Another interesting method of obtaining data would be Rodney Rothmans participant observation. This way of collecting data focuses on the researcher joining a group do do various activities, so he can study and research them first hand. Experiments are an extremely effective way to research people. in an experiment researchers can observe an obvious effect to what they did, making this form of data collection practical. Concerns for people's well beings have to be considered when conducting experiments. The last way to collect data on people would be to use a secondary source of information

Within every society, there are norms and values that each individual holds. However, when someone violates those norms, the person and the actions are considered to be abnormal. Sociologists use the term deviance to describe this violation of set norms in society. One might question why a group of individuals consider certain actions as deviant. The theoretical perspectives of symbolic interactionalism, functionalism, and conflict theorem, can be used to accurately answer these questions.

Symbolic interactionism and functionalist approaches are very different. The Symbolic interactionism approach focuses more on interpreting someone’s behaviors for how to act and what their intentions are. The functionalist approach focuses more on the functions they perform because these functions lead to the stability of our society (Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, R., & Carr, D. (n.d.). What is Sociology? In Introduction to sociology (Seagull 9E. ed., p. 18). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.).

The Sociology Research Methods Questionnaire is an example of a badly designed survey. You could improve several questions merely by separating them into 2 questions or narrowing the scope of the question. Also the title would lead you to believe that it had something to do with research methods in sociology, however, upon reading through the survey you soon realize that if there is an objective to this survey it is not clear. The order of the question and answer in some parts of the survey are not succinct and further add to the confusion created by the lack of subject matter. Finally there are many questions as that could have been answered by the research through additional steps.