Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic Interactionalism: One of the three perspectives of sociology is Symbolic Interactionalism, this is a microlevel theory that concerns

This response addresses question four and define the provided theories, which include structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. In doing so, various components of the theories are identified in relation to the topic of social change. In doing so, it is important to point out that in sociology, theories are used to explain the patterns, the way groups of people decide to perform specific actions, and the way societies do certain things or rather experience a change in a different manner. On the other hand, social change implies the growth and development of a social order, which bears some significant consequences.

In The Blind Side, Michael was raised in the projects of Memphis, Tennessee. One evening after a basketball game Leigh Anne Touhy notices Michael walking down the road, shivering in the cold. After having her husband stop the car to speak to him, she had learned Michael had planned to sleep at the school gym after everyone else had left. Leigh Anne offered Michael a warm place to sleep at her and her family’s home. This moment between these two was Michael’s first real feeling of family. This sparked the relationship that would give him a reason to keep living and gave him something to live for. Leigh Anne continued to include Michael in family gatherings which only enhanced the motherly feeling Michael got from her.

In “Presentations of Self in Everyday Life,” Goffman is constantly explaining how everyday life is a dramaturgy. A dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and essentially the production of a theatrical play. A social situation is much like a play. Every play has a stage, actors, a script, a set, rehearsals, and practices. In a social situation, the stage is where the encounter takes place, the actors are the people involved in the encounter, the script is the social norms of the social encounter, and the set is the environment where the encounter takes place. It takes practices and

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 paragmatic standpoints of the sociologist are different. Simmel’s vision is detacher from the particular individuals and in concentrated on the group as the analysis item. Group, according to Simmel, is an entity that has an independent reality, exists according to its own laws and is independent of the individual agents. A group, just as an individual, has a tendency to self-preservation due to a special vitality, the basis and process of which Simmel studies. Mead, in his turn, seeks to solve the problem of the individual self and consciousness about world and society. The key concept in his research is the concept of action, active activity (and not just a passive reaction according to the stimulus-response scheme as in classical behaviorists). Both of them mind action as the part of the social life, however,

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).

Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical perspective that people use definitions, meanings, symbols, interpretations, and human interactions to compare themselves to others (Henslin, 2010, p. 15). Herbert Blumer, whom attended University of Chicago with one of the founders of the

The symbolic interaction theory relates how individuals correlate actions and items to symbols they create. This association takes place between humans and the society they live in. Individuals can have the same situation going on, but associate different meaning through symbols of how they view what is going on. It is important to note that individuals will act differently based on the meaning of the interaction for the people or things around them. There is also a huge component of the symbolic interaction theory that takes into consideration how individuals think they are perceived. “In symbolic interactionism, this is known as "reflected appraisals" or "the looking glass self," and refers to our ability to think about how other people will think about us” (Boundless, 2015). This will also govern the symbols that we associate with different groups of people that we will encounter.

I did not chose symbolic interactionism for this article because it focuses on society as the product of everyday interactions with individuals and focuses on how society is organized with these interactions. My article doesn’t focus on how the two different race groups interact or the symbols involved in race or drug use. We learned about George Herbert Mead in class and how he believes that one’s self develops through social interactions. As I read my article, I could not apply his belief to the central

Symbolic interactionism helps explain both of our individual personalities and the ways the human society is linked together (p.27). It also helps us differentiate social order and change through a process. The teachings of symbolic interactionism comes mostly from George Herbert Mead But,George was not the only one that influenced the thoughts and ideas of symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interaction is theoretical perspective so it is still changing and evolving. It also has four kinds of understandings in the population and environment. One of the understandings is that symbolic interactionism is to understand why people engage or do not engage in social growth of the population . Symbolic Interactionism assumes that people from different social backgrounds, and different cultures may see different social issues within their social community. George Mead,Charles Cooley and Herbert Blumer shaped symbolic interactionism on the predictions of yourself causing you to behave a certain way so it becomes true.

In addition too, Symbolic Interactionism perspectives, there is Functionalism Perspective. The idea of the Functionalist perspective leads back to Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist whose writings form the core of the functionalist theory (McClelland, 2000). Functionalism is what happens when social structures have positive effects on the constancy of society. It is the frame work for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote harmony and stability. There are also three assumptions behind functionalism theory, Stability, Harmony, and Evolutions. Those who use social structure theory focus on studying the nature and the consequences of social structures. It also focuses on a relatively state pattern of social behavior. This gives our lives shape in

The concept of Symbolic Interactionism Was Thought up in the 1900’s by University of Chicago’s Professor George Mead and was then coined by Herbert Blumer a disciple of Mead who taught at the University of California, Berkley. Blumer said that there were three principles to Symbolic Interactionism: Meaning, Language, And Thinking and these later lead to the creation of self and society. The overall thought of symbolic interaction is that it is human realities that are socially constructed through communication and the use of symbols or meanings.

The symbolic interactionist perspective was introduced by the American philosopher George H. Mead in the 1920s. This level of theoretical perspective is called micro-sociology. It focuses on human social interactions on a much smaller scale. According to this perspective, human behavior is influenced by definitions and meanings that are created through symbolic interactions with the outside world. Symbolic interactionists believe that there are symbols within society that have important meanings, therefore, they affect human behaviors.

As part of their study, a student of social science scrutinizes the theories of many social scientists. This task can be abstruse without a framework with which to analyze those theories. Tom Campbell describes five parameters that can be useful when studying or comparing social theories. These parameters aren’t clear-cut categories, but ranges or areas within which an idea or theory can fall. Despite these ranges, Hubert Blumer’s theory of symbolic interaction can be said to fall somewhat more to one part of these parameters than the other. Symbolic interaction, as described by Blumer, is more of an idealist than a materialist, more descriptive than normative, more individualistic than holistic, more related to conflict than to consensus, and more accurately understood through an interpretive model than through a positivist one. This paper will endeavor to demonstrate that his views primarily fall in line with these parameters, even though there are aspects of each contained within his theory.