Abstract
This chapter introduces readers to symbolic interactionism—a theoretical perspective that is a century old and yet still entirely relevant. It begins by exploring the historical roots of this perspective and introduces readers to the philosopher George Herbert Mead and his view of human beings as actors (the core concept in this chapter). It examines Mead’s suggestion that ‘the self’ is developed socially through communication, interaction, and role-taking, and then considers the particular contribution of Mead’s student Herbert Blumer, who not only formalised the theoretical perspective but also advocated for the use of particular research methods, such as participant observation. This chapter examines a range of studies that have ‘applied’ symbolic interactionist ideas, including recent studies of digital avatars and ‘cyber selves’.
Human society is to be seen as consisting of acting people .
—Blumer (1998[1969]: 85)
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Notes
- 1.
Readers should be aware that there are three main strands or ‘schools’ of symbolic interactionism: The Chicago School, the main variant and the one examined here, and the lesser-known Iowa and Indiana Schools.
- 2.
In his excellent Key Sociological Thinkers (2008: 1), Rob Stones notes that some have used the capital letters of these three thinkers’ names—D, W, M—to disparagingly refer to them as ‘dead white males’. While he acknowledges some valid criticisms made of their work, Stones insists that it is vital that we continue to study the seminal contributions of these thinkers. I quite agree. In fact, I am making a similar case here on behalf of George Herbert Mead and Hebert Blumer.
- 3.
It is important to add here that some scholars have challenged Mead’s rigid distinction between humans and animals. For example, in drawing on their own research on ‘human-feline interaction’, Alger and Alger (1997) conclude ‘that there is growing evidence that symbolic interaction is widely distributed throughout the animal kingdom’ (p.65).
- 4.
Sometimes fantasy and science fiction films explore this idea as a literal possibility. For example, in the film Being John Malkovich (1999), a puppeteer discovers a portal that leads directly into the head of Hollywood actor John Malkovich. This scenario is also beautifully played out in the anime film, Your Name (2016), in which a boy named Taki and a girl named Mitsuha discover that they have inexplicably switched bodies.
- 5.
Readers should note that the difference between a ‘blink’ and a ‘wink’ was also used by the famous anthropologist Clifford Geertz to explain the difference between ‘thin’ (surface level) and ‘thick’ (detailed, nuanced, meaning-orientated) descriptions of human behaviour and culture. If the blinker’s behaviour is involuntary, ‘the winker is communicating, and indeed communicating in a quite precise and special way’ (Geertz 1973: 6).
- 6.
Ken Plummer (2008: 109) wryly observes that despite his lifelong advocacy for empirical work, Blumer himself was sometimes rather shy about doing it: ‘doing empirical work was not his strength—even though he advocated it all the time’.
- 7.
Readers might also check out the educational YouTube channel ‘Drugslab’, which features a series of videos made in the Netherlands that demonstrate the ‘effects’ of taking various drugs: ‘On this YouTube channel we, Nellie Benner, Bastiaan Rosman and Dzifa Kusenuh, will take in the drugs you want us to try. We do this in the name of science so we can show you what the effect of drugs are on the human body’ (https://www.youtube.com/c/Drugslab/about)
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O’Boyle, N. (2022). Actors: An Introduction to Symbolic Interactionism. In: Communication Theory for Humans. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02450-4_2
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