SOCI1513 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Symbolic Interactionism, Social Actions, Behaviorism
Document Summary
Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach to understanding the relationship between humans and society. The basic notion of symbolic interactionism is that human action and interaction are understandable only through the exchange of meaningful communication or symbols. In this approach, humans are portrayed as acting, as opposed to being acted upon. Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that things have for them these meanings arise out of social interaction social action results from a fitting together of individual lines of action. This approach stands in contrast to the strict behaviorism of psychological theories prevalent at the time it was first formulated. According to symbolic interactionism, humans are distinct from infrahumans because infrahumans simply respond to their environment, whereas humans have the ability to interrupt that process. Infrahumans are unable to conceive of alternative responses to gestures.
