Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 134

This section moves on to outline some important perspectives that put human actors and social interaction at the centre of the analysis. A significant early exponent of this perspective is Georg Simmel (1858–1918), often described as the ‘first sociologist of modernity’, on account of his work on the experience of modern city life (discussed in chapter 13, ‘Cities and Urban Life’). Simmel saw sociology as a discipline concerned primarily with the different forms of social interactions, or ‘sociation’ (Frisby 2002). His broadly interactionist ideas influenced the work of many peers and future sociologists. This section looks at some key ideas from symbolic interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology. Although there are important differences between them, as a group they contrast with the structural theories in sociology we have looked at so far.

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is credited with laying the foundations for an approach known as symbolic interactionism, a general label covering approaches that investigate social interactions with a focus on language and symbols. Interactionists often reject the very idea that social structures exist objectively, and they do not focus on them in their work. Herbert Blumer (who coined the term ‘symbolic interactionism’) argued that all talk of social structures or social systems is unjustified, as only individuals and their interactions can really be said to ‘exist’ at all.

Symbolic interactionism focuses on micro-level interactions and the ways in which meanings are constructed and transmitted. Mead (1934) argued that the individual person is in fact a social self, produced during interaction processes rather than being biologically given. His theory traces the emergence and development of the self through a series of stages in childhood, and his ideas of the social self underpin much interactionist research (see chapter 14, ‘The Life Course’, for a detailed discussion of Mead’s ideas). Recognizing that humans use symbols in communication is a basic premise of the approach.

A symbol is something that refers to or stands for something else, so words, gestures or objects can all be used to convey meaning during interactions. However, the same symbol can convey different meanings, even in the same setting. A wedding ring, for instance, may be interpreted by one person as a sign of love and commitment but by their spouse as signifying a loss of freedom. The symbolic character of human communication marks it out as different from most animal behaviour, which involves responses to objective stimuli. Human interactions are not simply automatic behavioural responses but involve symbols in the creation of meaning.

The centre of symbolic interactionism for some thirty years until 1950 was the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology (known as the Chicago School), though by no means all Chicago sociologists were interactionists. The department was also home to the ‘ecological’ approach of Louis Wirth, Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess (see chapter 13, ‘Cities and Urban Life’, for a discussion of this approach). Nonetheless, having an institutional base was important in popularizing the approach.

Arguably, the most successful symbolic interactionist is Erving Goffman (1922–82). Goffman’s studies of mental ‘asylums’, processes of stigmatization and the ways in which people present their selves in social encounters have become sociological classics, as much for their methodology and observational style as for their findings. In developing his ‘dramaturgical analysis’, which works with the metaphor of the theatre, Goffman has had a wide influence on sociology students across the world.

Meeting people is a normal occurrence, but interactionists are fascinated by the rituals and unspoken assumptions in play during such an everyday phenomenon.

See chapter 12, ‘Social Interaction and Daily Life’, for a discussion of Goffman’s perspective.

Phenomenology is an actor-centred perspective which deals with the ways in which social life is actually experienced. Literally, phenomenology is the systematic study of phenomena – things as they appear in our experience. Its roots in sociology lie in the philosophical work of the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, though in sociological research the Austrianborn philosopher and sociologist Alfred Schutz (1899–1959) has been more important. Schutz concentrated on people’s experience of everyday life and the ways in which this comes to be ‘taken for granted’ as part of the lifeworld – the world as routinely experienced and lived as ‘natural’. Schutz refers to this routine acceptance of the world as adopting a ‘natural attitude’. For him, the task of phenomenological sociology is to understand better how this happens and what its consequences are.

Schutz was interested in typifications – the ways in which experienced phenomena are classified according to previous experience. Typification is commonplace. When we meet someone we perhaps think, ‘Oh, so she’s that kind of person’, or ‘He seems an honest type’. Typification helps to order our world and make it more predictable and therefore ‘safe’. But if this becomes stereotypification it can also be dangerous – the illegitimate generalization about people based simply on their membership of a certain social group. Examples of stereotyping are racism, sexism and negative attitudes towards disabled people. However, the focus of Schutz’s work was on the ways in which these interaction processes produce typifications, not the positive or negative consequences of the latter.

Individuals also tend to make the assumption that everyone thinks in much the same way as they do and that they can safely forget about problems of interpersonal communication. Once assumptions of this kind become internalized, they are sedimented below the surface of conscious existence, forming the basis of the natural attitude. In this way, people experience important aspects of the social world, such as language and culture, as objective and external to themselves, and ‘society’ (as Durkheim suggested) is taken as a thing-like entity, separate from the individual. Phenomenology has not had the same impact on sociology as some of the other perspectives, though it did give rise to ethnomethodology.

Ethnomethodology – the systematic study of the methods used by ‘natives’ (members of a particular society) to construct their social worlds – is a third interactionist perspective. Its roots can be traced back to phenomenological philosophy, but it rose to prominence only in the 1960s with the research studies of Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) and Aaron Cicourel (1928–). Ethnomethodologists were highly critical of mainstream sociology, particularly Parsonian structural functionalism, which Garfinkel thought treated people as if they were ‘cultural dopes’ – passive recipients of society’s socializing agents – rather than creative actors. Garfinkel also took issue with Durkheim’s famous statement that sociologists should ‘treat social facts as things’. For Garfinkel, this should be the starting point for inquiry, not assumed in advance of it. Ethnomethodology seeks to uncover just how social facts are created by society’s members and come to have that thing-like quality, and much of its analysis is of conversation, which sets ethnomethodology apart from other interactionist sociologies.

Ethnomethodology is discussed more widely in chapter 12, ‘Social Interaction and Daily Life’.

In contrast to many other actor-oriented perspectives, the work of Max Weber explores both individual actions and social structures. Although he was certainly interested in social interactions and the micro level of social life, his work on world religions, economic sociology and legal systems was historically informed, strongly comparative and concerned with the overall development and direction of societies. This is in contrast to the interactionist tradition as it developed after Weber, which became focused much more on the micro level of social life. The approaches in this section illustrate a basic difference in classical sociology between micro-level and structural (or macro-level) perspectives, which remains one of sociology’s longstanding theoretical divides.