SOCPSY 2YY3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Symbolic Interactionism
1 Feb 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Blumer & Symbolic Interactionism
3 premises of symbolic interactionism
1. Humans act towards things on the basis of the meanings those things have for them
2. The meaning of such things is derived from the social interaction that one has with others
3. Meanings are handled in, and modified through an interpretive process used by the person dealing
with the things they encounter
Position of symbolic interactionism:
• The meanings that things have for humans are central to their own right
• Meanings are intrinsic
• The meaning of a thing is but the expression of the given psychological elements that are brought
into play in connection with the perception of the thing
• Sees meanings as social products, as creations that are formed in and through the defining activities
of people as they interact
• The use of meanings involves an interpretive process
Root images of symbolic interactionism
• Nature of human society or human group life (culture and social structure) - composed of individual
actions put together towards specific goal
• Nature of social interaction (often taken for granted) - forms human conduct
o Meaning making occurs through social interaction
o The way we behave is based on the interactions based on the people around us
o With friends vs in class
• Nature of objects (physical, social, abstract objects) - meaning sets the way in which we see the
object, the way were prepared to act towards it, and the way we're ready to talk about it; the
meaning of objects arises out of the way they're defines to the person by others who they interact
with
• The human being as an acting organism (the self object emerges from the process of social
interaction in which other people are defining a person to themselves/ we see ourselves through
the way In which others see or define us)
• Nature of human action (humans confront the world that they must interpret in order to act instead
of an environment in which the response is of organization)
