Tag: symbolic interactionism

Symbolic Interactionism and Socialisation

socialisation is an active process of social interaction

Symbolic Interactionists see socialisation as an active process in which social interaction between children with adults and other children play a crucial role.

Gerald Handel drew on the work of George Herbert Mead to develop a symbolic interactionist perspective on socialisation and the development of the self, and he is the main theorist considered below.

Social Interaction and biological development

Social interaction is a crucial part of the biological development of the child.

The common sense view of child development is that biology comes first and once the child has the physical and brain capacities to walk and talk, then they walk and talk, but for Handel biological development and social interaction work and develop together.

A newborn child is unable to co-operate with others and take part in society because they are physically undeveloped and are unsocialised.

As the child gets older they mature physically and become socialised, both of which gradually allow them to function as a member of society.

A young child is dependent on its carers for its survival, but even this requires interaction between the child and the caregivers (crying is a basic form of communication), and social interaction is a vital part of a child’s intellectual and emotional development.

Intellectual capacities are developed through a child interacting with others in the same way in which muscles are developed through their physical usage.

Take the development of language for example: social interaction is absolutely essential for a child to develop the capacity to think in words and to speak and communicate. Without social interaction, language remains undeveloped as does the part of the brain which processes language.

Empathy, Communication and the Self

The process of socialisation allows the child to develop three key capacities:

  1. The development of a self-concept. Following Mead, the development one’s self-concept is inherently social. It involves considering how other people see my own actions, and through this process the child learns to self-regulate by avoiding actions others don’t approve of and vice-versa for approved-of actions. In this way, by reflecting on the ‘looking glass self’ the individual comes to develop a sense of their own self as distinct from others.
  2. The ability to empathise. Developing empathy is an integral part of developing a self-concept since it involves putting yourself in the shoes of others and considering how one’s actions make other people. Through doing this the child learns empathy.
  3. The ability to communicate. Socialisation is inherently communicative, from the very early stages of non-verbal communication to the later development of language with its more complex grammatical forms and nuances of meaning.

So for Handel the process of socialisation simultaneously involves the individual developing a unique sense of self, but also a sense of their social self, and through socialisation they learn to regulate their behaviour so that they take account of the reactions of others, rather than just individuals doing whatever they want all the time.

Agencies of socialisation and peer groups

In order to fully understand the process of how a child is socialised we need to take a close, in-depth look at the perspectives of both the adult agents of socialisation such as parents and teachers and child’s peer group, or the other children they are socialised with.

Agents of socialisation

From an interactionist perspective adult agents of socialisation have a lot of freedom to socialise their children in different ways. There are many different styles of parenting practice for example, and most parents are, for the most part, left alone with their children for MOST of the time to socialise them as they see fit. Thus we should not expect all children in a society to be socialised in the same way.

Granted, there are laws and guidelines outlining how parents and teachers should interact with children, but these set very broad limits and the State rarely intervenes in any major ways in the socialisation of most children, and within the broad limits set there is a lot of room for variations in socialisation depending on the parents and teachers educational background, religion, politics, ethnicity, or just their personalities.

Peer groups

Children play a more active role in their own social interaction with other children compared to adults, and the opinions of other children are often perceived as important by children themselves.

Thus socialisation within the peer, or reference group is an important aspect of the child’s development.

Socialisation within the peer group operates differently to socialisation with adult agents.

  1. Children take part in making up the rules of engagement rather than just being expected to follow rules laid down by adults.
  2. Peer groups tend to seek more immediate gratification while adults try to stress deferred gratification.
  3. Peer groups provide an alternative to adult standards of normative behaviour, which may come into conflict with those standards!

Peer groups are not just important for child socialisation, they also play a role in adult socialisation and adults go through changes, such as taking on a new job, for example.

Socialisation and conflicting norms

Handel sees conflict over appropriate norms of behaviour as a normal part of socialisation.

There will be conflict over what the child wants, possibly reinforced by the peer group (‘more cake now’) and what the parents expect, for example.

There will also likely be conflict when children and adults who have different histories of socialisation come into contact in certain social contexts, because of the wide variety of social norms in a society.

However there is also a sense of ‘societal demand’ – society as a whole has broad norms which nearly everyone understands they need to abide by and so for the most part we can settle our differences peacefully.

Evaluation

This is a more nuanced and complex theory of socialisation than that offered by Functionlists and Marxists which recognises that children play an active role in their own socialisation and are not just passive sponges.

Handel’s account is both too general (not in-depth enough) and takes too little account of structural features of society such as social class.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the Culture and Identity option, which is sometimes taught within first year A-level Sociology.

Sources/ find our more

Gerald Handel (Wikipedia entry)

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Herbert Blumer’s Symbolic Interactionism

meaning emerges from interaction and society only seems stable!

Herber Blumer (1900 to 1997) was a symbolic interactionist who argued that society consisted of individuals temporarily agreeing on shared meanings to the extent that they could act together. However, meanings and social situations were constantly being weighed up and negotiated by individuals in different ways and thus society itself was something unstable, and which was contingent upon social interactions.

Bluemer’s main contribution to sociology is that he developed Mead’s Symbolic interactionism in a more sociological direction. He theorised more about how society emerges out of social interaction.

Meaning emerges from social interaction

For Blumer, meaning is a social product which emerges out of individuals actively interpreting the social and natural world.

There are three main aspects to Blumer’s social action theory…

  1. Human beings act on the meanings they give to people, objects and situations, rather than just reacting to external stimuli.
  2. Meanings emerge through the process of interaction rather than being present from the outset. Meanings are created and modified within interaction situations rather than being fixed. Actors do not just slavishly follow pre-existing norms or roles.
  3. Meanings are the result of interpretations by individuals within interaction contexts and meanings develop over time, thus social norms and institutions can change.

Society emerges from groups of people committing to classifying a situations along particular lines to the extent that there is shared meaning, but these shared meanings and interpretations are always potentially open to change.

Blumer’s theory of society

Society is the sum total of all joint actions or social acts taking place at a given moment. Society happens when individuals co-ordinate their interpretations of the social situation and what Blumer calls ‘joint action’ occurs.

The main acting units within society can range from individuals to small groups to large scale institutions.

Every individual in an acting unit has a different interpretation of the situation, but sufficient agreement with others for collective action to take place.

We tend to take meaning for granted when social situations run smoothly, but even when those situations run smoothly, there is still a complex and active process of every actor interpreting the situation – a process of individuals checking meaning, weighing up their options and considering alternatives. Thus at any moment there is the potential that the entire social situation may break down.

Social ‘structures’ only seem stable

Blumer acknowledged for that most part that social reality is experienced as taken for granted, and predictable. Over time individuals learn accepted and legitimate ways of acting associated with specific contexts and roles and so social reality often seems stable to individuals.

Nonetheless situations are continuously being weighed up and are potentially alterable, and thus in reality society is fluid and more unstable than it appears.

Social institutions similarly place restrictions on individuals but even when there are clearly established rules and long standing traditions, individuals still have room for interpretation and creativity.

In Blumer’s own words…

“The common repetitive behaviour of people… should not mislead the student into believing that no process of interpretation is in play…. even though fixed, the actions of the participating people are constructed by them through a process of interpretation.” (Blumer, 1969).

Especially in our global society where people regularly encounter other groups of people with different symbolic systems of meaning it is hard to maintain a position that there is just one set way of seeing the world. The more diversity is, the more it becomes apparent that there are multiple interpretations and thus that society is fluid.

Social action and research methods

Blumer was very involved with developing appropriate social research methods, arguing that research should be empirical and small scale.

Because social reality was constructed by individuals, each of whom had their own slightly different interpretations of social situations, the only appropriate methodologies were those that could get the complexities of these multiple interpretations, namely qualitative research methods such as unstructured interviews and participant observation.

Signposting and relevance to A-level sociology

This material is primarily relevant to the Theory and Methods aspect of second year sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources

Blumer (1969) Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method.

Inglis, D (2012) An Invitation to Social Theory, Polity.

Symbolic Interactionism

Self identity is an active process through which ‘I’ reflect on how i think others see me and adapt my social self accordingly.

George Herbert Mead (1863 – 1931) believed that human experience, thought and action were inherently social because humans interact on the basis of symbols, the most important of which was language.

He saw the self as something active and dynamic which emerged through social action and interaction and was thus critical of structuralist theories such as Functionalism and Marxism which saw the self as something passive and determined by simply soaking up norms and values.

Mead emphasised the centrality of language as a shared system of symbols and signs which allows for the development of selfhood and social interaction.

Three key ideas of Mead’s social psychological theory of self are:

  1. Individuals acquire language (symbolic meaning) through their attachment and interaction within social groups
  2. Language (symbols) is the primary medium through which the concept of selfhood emerges
  3. Individual selfhood is realised through social interaction which is mediated through language (symbols) and develops throughout the life course.

Mead was a philosopher and social psychologist whose most important work was Mind, Self and Society published posthumously from his ‘student notes’ in 1967.

The social self

The central idea of Mead’s work is that the individual self is inherently social. He didn’t see the self as something innate or fixed, but thought that it emerged through action and interaction with others.

He went as far as to say that the self could not be introspected because it only existed in interaction, outside of interaction the self ceases to exist.

It is only through language that we develop a sense of self and become self aware through an ongoing process of self-monitoring and reflection.

When the individual engages in such processes they are actively considering possible courses of action, possible ways of being in the world and actively excluding others, they are engaged in the process of ‘making themselves’ which is dependent on social interactions.

Language: the basis for human interaction

Mead emphasises the importance of language throughout his work.

Language comprises a system of symbols and signs that enable human beings to generated and signify meanings.

It is language which makes culture possible and separates humans from animals. Animals can make gestures related to objects and events in their immediate context, but their communication is always limited to those contexts.

Language allows human beings to refer to people and events that are divorced from the contexts in which they first occurred. Thus it is through language that the temporal and spatial dimensions of human existence are opened up and we are no longer trapped in the immediacy of. the present.

Language is also the basis of dialogue which is beyond mere one off exchanges between individuals, it allows for complex systems of classification and rational arguments to occur, both of which are again abstract in the sense that they are not dependent on immediate context.

The I and the Me

Language also allows for dialogue with one’s self and it is through language that one’s self-concept is developed.

For Mead, language does not only describe the world, it makes makes objectification possible, it enables us to objectify or ‘create’ the self.

Mead’s theory of language and the self rests on his distinction between the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’.

  • The ‘I’ is reality as we experience it from the inside and the source from which all consciously directed action springs. The I is the idiosyncratic and created aspect of the individual.
  • The ‘me’ is the object of self-awareness, one’s own physical body perceived by others. The Me represents the social component born out of the internationalisation of social roles, norms and values

The Me does not act as a constraining force on the I but is both enabling and regulating because it allows the individual to review and adapt their actions in light of the perceived reactions of others.

The self is thus a process, not fixed or static.

The generalised other

The generalised other refers to the complex of social attitudes, norms, regulations and ways of seeing the world internalised by an individual. It is the link between the individual and the social groups to which one belongs.

The notion of the generalised other is crucial to Mead’s theory of self-development.It explains how individuals learn to regulate and monitor their own conduct by assuming the perspective of a generalised and impersonal other.

it is only through thinking of how others see ‘me’ that the ‘I’ can realise its own autonomy.

In short we need this social interaction to be able to be conscious of ourselves and develop ourselves, without interaction the individual self does not exist!

The development of the self

Mead also theorised about how individuals come to develop a sense of self through different stages of childhood. He distinguished between the play stage and the game stage.

The play stage

Children first start to develop a sense of self by playing roles that are not their own, such as playing doctors, spacemen, or superheroes for example.

In doing so they become aware that there is a difference between themselves and the role they are playing, hence the idea of the objectified ‘Me’ starts to become apparent as different to the ‘I’.

The game stage

Mead provides the example of game playing as a situation in which children learn to see the world (or the game) from the general situation of all other players and the different view points of particular players.

A fundamental part of a game is knowing other people’s roles. Take as an example the game of football, where there are several different roles: attacking players, defensive players, the goalkeeper and the referee, to name a few, and to be able. to play football any individual needs an idea of the role of each of these, and this is already a complex process that involves thinking how other people will be seeing, and playing the game.

An individual also needs a concept of the generalised other to play a game of football – or an overall picture of the field of play and how all the parts work together in general.

Later on in life

The ability to empathise with and see oneself through the eyes of the ‘generalised other’ is essential to successful interpersonal communication because the reactions of others are tied to and shape the parameters of social situations. It is ultimately what makes co-operative action at the social level possible.

Role taking

An important aspect of the development of self identity is role-taking. People interact on the basis of taking on the role of the other: for example if someone is waving at you across the street, you think that they want to attract your attention, and this ‘taking on their position’ is crucial to the basis of your interaction with them. (Of course you may use other signs, stereotypes)

There are also range of professional roles associated with various jobs such as teaches and doctors, which have expected patterns of behaviour associated with them, and in order to take on one of these roles any individual will have to conform to these.

Culture, social roles and institutions

Mead recognised that social institutions existed, but only in so far as there were social roles attached to them.

For example, the nuclear family exists as long men and women accept the concept of mother and father, the school exists as long as teachers and pupils accept their relative roles to each others.

He did not believe that social roles determined the individual because…

  1. Many cultural expectations were not specific. Clothes
  2. Individuals have a choice over what roles they enter
  3. Some roles encourage diversity
  4. Society does not have an all embracing culture
  5. Many cultural meanings suggest possibilies rather than requirments
  6. At times it may not be possible to fulfil cultural expectations of social roles, innovation may be required.

Social Order

Despite the fact that Mead didn’t believe institutions existed in any modernist solid sense of the word, he still recognised that there was a sense of social order and stability, but these were only actively accomplished through interactions, which are dynamic.

It follows that social order is dependent on the actions and interactions of individuals and thus is fluid, and liable to change at a moment’s notice.

Evaluations

Mead offers us a social psychological account of human interaction which is relevant to social theory because it challenges the modernist, static theories of Functionalism and Marxism which view individuals as passive and lacking agency.

However, Mead’s symbolic interactionism may be too focused on the micro small scale, just interactions, there is no consideration of history and power structures.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the Theory and Methods module taught as part of the AQA’s A-level sociology second year.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources/ find out more

Inglis, D (2012) An Invitation to Social Theory, Polity.

Wikipedia entry: George Herbert Mead.

Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

Media Representations of women

The media have historically under-represented women, something Tuchman referred to as ‘symbolic annihilation’; women have also been misrepresented through stereotyping and subject to the ‘male gaze’. However, in recent years representations of women are more common and more postive.

Women have historically been underrepresented and misrepresented in stereotypical roles within mainstream media.

This post focuses on symbolic annihilation, the cult of femininity and the male gaze as examples of this, and then looks at whether things have changed in recent decades.

Under-representation and symbolic annihilation

Gaye Tuchman (1978) developed the concept of Symbolic Annihilation to refer to the under-representation of women in a narrow range of social roles, while men were represented in a full range of social and occupational roles.

Tuchman also argued that women’s achievements were often not reported or trivialised and often seen as less important than things like their looks

According to Tuchman, women were often represented in roles linked to gender stereotypes, particularly those related to housework and motherhood – a good example of this being washing powder advertisements in which mothers and small daughters are working together, while men and boys are the ones covered in mud. This post has some excellent examples of such stereotypes.

Ferguson (1980) conducted a content analysis of women’s magazines from the end of WWII to 1980 and found that representations were organised around what she called the cult of femininity, based on traditional, stereotypical female roles and values: caring for others, family, marriage, and concern for appearance.

Ferguson noted that teenage magazines aimed at girls did offer a broader range of female representations, but there was still a focus on him, home and looking good for him.

The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation in 2006 found that there was little coverage of women’s sport, but what little coverage there was had a tendency to trivialise, sexualise and devalue women’s sporting achievements. HOWEVER, this later example may be something that has changed considerably over the last decade (see below).

Misrepresentations (myths and stereotypes)

In ‘The Mouse that Roared’ Henry Giroux argued that women were represented in a narrow, restricted and distorted range of roles.

Supporting evidence for Giroux lies in the historical representation of female characters in Disney Films – where the typical female character is a sexualised yet delicate princess who needs to be rescued by a stronger male character.

Examples of where Disney reinforces female stereotypes include:

  • Snow White – who cleans the house of the male dwarves and is eventually rescued by a male prince because she is pretty.
  • Beauty and the Beast – In which Belle endures an abusive and violent beast in order to redeem him.
  • Ariel – who gives up her voice to win the prince with her body.
  • Mulan – who wins the war almost single handed only to return home to be romanced.

This blog post from Society Pages is well worth a read on this topic.

Laura Mulvey ‘The Male Gaze’

Laura Mulvey studied cinema films and developed the concept of the Male Gaze to describe how the camera lens eyed up the female characters for the sexual viewing pleasure of men.

The Male Gaze occurs when the camera focuses on women’s bodies, especially breasts, bums and things, and spends too long lingering on these areas when it isn’t necessary.

The male gaze of the camera puts the audience in the perspective of the heterosexual men – woman are displayed as a sexual object for both the characters in the film and the spectator – thus the man emerges as the dominant force and the woman is passive under the active (sexual) gaze of the man.

The overall effect of this is that women become objectified as sex objects, rather than being represented as whole people.

Mulvey argued that the Male Gaze occurred in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera.

Video summarizing all of the above:

This is a very useful vodcast outlining the classic theories of the poor representation of women in the media historically: 

Changes to the representations of women?

The roles of women in society have changed considerably since these historical analyses of women’s representations: since the 1970s women now occupy a much wider range of roles and equality with men.

David Gauntlett in ‘Media Gender and Identity’ argues that there has been an increase in the diversity of representations and roles of women in the media since the 1970s, and a corresponding decrease in stereotypical representations, which broadly reflects wider social changes.

The representation of women in films

There have been several films in recent decades with ‘strong’ lead female characters who are fierce, tough and resourceful, and thus arguably subvert hegemonic concepts of masculinity. Arguably a watershed moment in this was the 1979 film ‘Alien’ in which the female lead character Ripley outlives her male colleagues and ultimately kills the Alien threat.

Since then a number of female heroines have featured as the lead characters in various action movies such Terminator 2, the Tomb Raider films, Kill Bill, and The Hunger Games.

However, rather than subverting hegemonic concepts of masculinity, it could be argued that such films still perpetuate the ‘beauty myth’ as all the above lead female characters are slim and attractive.

Katniss Everdeen – a positive representation of women?

The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is a simple test which presents a quantitative analysis of the representation of women in relation to men in film. To pass the test a film has to pass three tests…

  1. It has to have at least two (named) women in it
  2. Who talk to each other
  3. Above something other than a man

The website above allows you to search for films which passed the test by year, and there is clear evidence that female characters are more visible and independent year on year, but there are still many films which do not pass this simple basic test.

The representation of women in Game of Thrones

At first glance, there seem to be a number of positive female characters in Game of Thrones – the assassin and ultimate killer of the Ice King Arya Stark being the most stand-out example, with other positive female characters including Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Sansa Stark (once she gets through her abusive relationship).

However, various feminist commentators have argued that all of these positive representations are let down by the end of series eight with Brienne falling apart emotionally because of her love for Jamie Lannister, Daenerys literally going mad, Sansa apparently being strong because of her previous abusive relationship (rather than in spite of it), and with all the anonymous women cowering in the crypt during the battle with the Ice King, while all the anonymous men are outside fighting.

A further Feminist argument is that all of these women are portrayed as strong individuals who are strong because they adopt male characteristics, and ultimately it is male violence which wins the day rather than more diverse forms of feminine power.

Positive representations of women in 2019?

The representations of women in the news

 In 2015 the Global Media Monitoring group conducted quantitative content analysis of 1960 sources covering 431 announcers and reporters.

They found that:

  • The overall presence of women as sources was 28%.
  • Compared to 2010 data, the number of women sources as a proportion of all sources, had decreased by 3 per cent.
  • Women continued to remain largely confined to the sphere of the private, emotional and subjective, while men still dominate the sphere of the public, rational and objective.
  • Women were significantly under-represented in hard news stories and in all the authoritative, professional and elite source occupational categories and are, instead, significantly over-represented as voices of the general, public (homemaker, parent, student, child) and in the occupational groups most associated with ‘women’s work’, such as health and social and childcare worker, office or service industry worker.

Looking  at the function women performed in stories, their contribution as experts (20%) and spokespeople (25%) were low,  instead, they were mostly called upon to voice popular opinion (54%) or speak from their personal experience including as eye-witnesses or speak from their own subject position.

The persistence of the Beauty Myth?

Tebbel (2000) argues that women are under more pressure than ever before to conform to the Beauty Myth. She argues that the body and faces of real women have been symbolically annihilated, replaced by computer manipulated, airbrushed, artificially images.

Killborn argues that media representations present women as ‘mannequins’ – size zero, tall and thin, and with perfect blemish-free skin.

Orbach further argues that the media continues to associate slimness with health, happiness, success and popularity

The representations of women in advertising

 Some recent evidence seems to challenge the persistence of the Beauty Myth….

There seems to have been progress in this area in recent years. In 2015, Protein World launched its ‘Beach Body Ready’ advertising campaign, and while this clearly reinforced the Beauty Myth stereotype, it prompted a significant backlash with several of the advertisements being vandalised, and many women posting images of their ordinary bodies on social media as a criticism of the overt body shaming involved with Protein World’s advert.

Since 2015, there has been an increase in the diversity of representations of women in advertising, for example:

  • Dove‘s Real Beauty‘ campaign72 featured a diverse range of body shapes and ethnicities.
  • Sport England has been running its successful ‘This Girl Can‘ campaign since 2015, which has since evolved into the ‘fit got real’ campaign:

In 2017, The Advertising Standards Authority launched new guidelines on avoiding gender stereotyping in advertising and in 2019 banned two ads from airing in the UK because they reinforced gender stereotypes.

Finally, UN women has recently launched its ‘Unstereotype Alliance‘, which challenges gender stereotypes in advertising on a global scale. Supporters of this initiative include advertising industry companies such as Unilever, P&G, WPP, Diageo, Google and Facebook.

Signposting and Related Posts

This material was produced primarily for A-level sociology students studying The Media option as their topic option, but it should also be of interest to media studies students.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

A Level Sociology of Media Bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my A Level Sociology of the Media Revision Bundle which contains the following:

  1. 57 pages of revision notes covering all of the sub-topics within the sociology of the media
  2. Short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers – three examples of the 10 mark, ‘outline and explain’ questions and three of the 10 mark ‘analyse’ with item questions, all take from the specimen paper and the 2017/2018 exam papers.
  3. 19 mind maps in pdf and png format – covering most sub-topics within the sociology of the media.
  4. Three essays and essay plans, taken from the specimen paper and 2017 and 2018 exam papers.

Social Action Theories for Second Year A Level Sociology – A Summary

We can divide sociological theories into two broad types: structural and action theories.

Functionalism, Marxism and Feminism are all structural theories, are interested in ‘society as a whole’ and ask ‘societal level questions’ such as ‘what functions does education perform for society and the individual’? (Functionalism) or ‘why does injustice exist’ (Marxism and Feminism)? They seek to understand the actions of individuals by looking at the structure of wider society and generally believe that ‘society shapes the individual’.

Interpretivism.png

Sociologists who adopt social action perspectives usually reject the view that society has a clear structure that directs individuals to behave in certain ways. Some social action theorists do not deny the existence of a social structure, but see this structure as rising out of the action of individual; others argue that there is no such thing as a social structure. For the purposes of Second Year sociology you need to know about four Action Theories – all of which have slightly different views on the relationship between social structure and social actions.

Max Weber is generally regarded as the founder of social action theory – he believed that we need to develop an empathetic understanding to uncover the personal meanings and motives individuals give to their own actions, and that this was crucial to understanding how social structures changed over time. However, he also believed that we could make generalisations about types of motive people had and that these general motivations were influenced by the wider society – thus he is half way between structure and action theory, rather than a pure ‘social action’ theorist.

George Herbert Mead developed ‘Symbolic Interactionism’, and he put more emphasis on the role of the active individual than Weber.

For Mead, there is still a society ‘out there’ which constrains human action, in the sense that there are a number of pre-existing social roles which people have to take on in order to get by in society. However, individuals have considerable freedom to shape their identities within and between these social roles.

Mead also argued that everything about society is open to multiple interpretations and meanings – the same institutions, social roles and individual-actions can mean very different things to different people. For Mead, individuals are constantly interpreting and re-interpreting each other’s ‘symbolic actions’ – and this is an ongoing, complex process – if we want to understand human action we need to understand the micro-details of how people interpret other people’s actions, and how their re-actions are in turn re-interpreted and so on.

In order to truly understand why people act in the way that they do, we need to understand people’s ‘self-concept’ – their identities, there ideas about the ‘generalised other’ (society) and micro-interpretations.

Erving Goffman’s developed Mead’s work in his Dramaturgical theory of social action – he argued that the most appropriate way to understand people is to view them as if they are actors on a stage – people use props (such as clothes and body-language) to project idealised images of themselves to a social audience – people have multiple identities which change according to the social setting and the audience they find themselves performing in front of. As well as the social world, the front stage, we all have backstage areas (mostly the home) where we prepare for our social performances, and reflect on how good or bad our performances have been, and plan to change them accordingly. For Goffman, individuals are very active and manipulative, and we may never actually get to see people’s real identities unless we spend considerable time with them during their day to day lives.

Labelling Theory focuses on how the definitions (meanings) people impose on situations or on other people can have real consequences (even if those definitions are not based in reality) – and argues that people in power generally have more ability to impose their definitions on situations than the powerless. For example, parents, teachers and the police generally have more power to make labels stick and make these labels have consequences compared to working class youths. Labelling theory criticises both Mead and Goffman, arguing that while we need to look at micro-level interactions and meanings to examine labelling, we still need to understand where people are located in the power-structure of society to fully understand the process of labeling and identity construction.

Sources

Most posts are adapted from standard degree and ‘A’ Level text books such as Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives