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Symbolic interaction is based on three basic propositions according to Blumer (Poloma, 1999: 224-225; Tye & Tye, 1992: 36);
(a) Humans develop their attitudes towards things according to the meanings that things propose to them.
(b) These meanings are inferred from the “interaction of one of them from its addressees”.
(c) These meanings change within an interpretive process.

Objects, humans, conditions and events don’t feature an intrinsic meaning. Meaning is attributed to these elements by means of human interaction. For instance; a video player in a college can be defined as a means of education utilized in order to demonstrate educational videos by the professor. If a student uses this video player in order to watch the films that he/she has rented, then it is defined as a source of entertainment and enjoyment. Similarly, for people in a jail watching the films sent by their families, this device shall be defined as the window opening to the outer world (Berg, 2000). As it can be understood from this example, humans form meaning as a result of their own experiences. These experiences are not random or unrelated.

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Symbolic interactionism | Society and Culture | MCAT | Khan Academy

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Being one of the most commonly used theories, there are many scholars and theorists who contributed towards the idea of symbolic interactionism. To name a few, George Herbert Mead and Charles Hortan Cooley originated this theory as key people later inspired by them Herbert Blumer coined the term and put the theory forward to the world. It has to be noted that Blummer was greatly influenced by John Dewey (the leader of sociological theory). The basic idea this theory put forward is that people behave based on the meaning they have given to them.
THEORY

"Symbolic Interactionism is the way we learn to interpret and give meaning to the world through our interactions with others."- Scott Plunkett.

The symbolic interactionism analysis society by the descriptive meanings that people have given to objects, events and behaviors. The behavioral pattern of the people will be based on these descriptive meanings because people behave according to their descriptive believes rather than objective truth. These descriptive believe and meanings are nothing but interpretations given by the people thus the theory suggest that society is based on the interpretations of the people. The people interpret each other's behavior and a social bond is thus created which is grounded on this interpretation. These interpretations are often called "definition of the situation" because they just define the situations.

This theory says how humans develop a complex set of symbols that gives meaning to the world in their perspective. The meanings are molded from the interactions with the society. And these interactions are subjectively interpreted by them to suit the meaning in accordance with the existing symbols. It can be said that if we need to understand the behavioral patterns of the society we need to understand the existing symbols. The Interactions which molded the symbols also create a social structure. The symbolic interactionism also articulates that the individuals build a sense of self identity through these interactions with the society.

Blummer suggests that there are three core principles of this theory.

They are

1. Meaning :

It suggests that people act and behave towards the other people and things based upon the meaning that they have given to them. The principle of meaning is central to the theory of symbolic interactionism.

Example: when we think of a Buddhist Monk the image comes to our mind. We will have some assumptions about these people and our behavior towards them will be based on these assumptions that we have made.

2. Language :

The second core principle which makes the symbols and interactions comprehensible to the mind. And which helps in formulating assumptions. According to the theory, the naming assigned through the language, the naming creates meanings to everything because everything has its own name. To name a thing, the knowledge about the thing is important and thus the name indicates some feature or any other kind of knowledge about the things. This knowledge is converted into names through languages.

Example: when we say to have dinner outside, the people who listens makes sense of it based on their perspectives and understanding. When I say dinner outside someone will understand it as just go out and get something to eat and someone else may think that having dinner outside as a date.

3. Thought :

The third core principle of symbolic interactionism is thought. The thought implies the interpretations that we have assigned to the symbols. The basis of thought is language. It is a process of mentally conversing about the meanings, names and symbols. The thought includes the imagination. Which have the power to provide an idea even about an unknown thing based on known knowledge.

Example: The best example of thought is 'to think'

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INTRODUCTION Being one of the most commonly used theories, there are many scholars and theorists who contributed towards the idea of symbolic interactionism. To name a few, George Herbert Mead and Charles Hortan Cooley originated this theory as key people later inspired by them Herbert Blumer coined the term and put the theory forward to [...]

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ReviseSociology - A level sociology revision - education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

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Verstehen and the Protestant Ethic are two things Weber is well-known for

Last Updated on December 10, 2022 by Karl Thompson

Max Weber (1864-1920) was one of the founding fathers of Sociology. Weber saw both structural and action approaches as necessary to developing a full understanding of society and social change.

For the purposes of A level Sociology we can reduce Weber's extensive contribution to Sociology to three things:

Max Weber: Three Key Points

Firstly he argued that 'Verstehen' or empathatic understanding is crucial to understanding human action and social change, a point which he emphasised in his classic study 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism';

secondly, he believed we could make generalisations about the basic types of motivation for human action (there are four basic types) and

thirdly, he still argued that structure shaped human action, because certain societies or groups encourage certain general types of motivation (but within these general types, there is a lot of variation possible).

This final point can be illustrated by a quote from one of his most important works 'Economy and Society', first published in the 1920s, in which he said 'Sociology is a science concerning itself with interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences.'

Social Action and Verstehen

Weber argued that before the cause of an action could be ascertained you had to understand the meaning attached to it by the individual. He distinguished between two types of understanding.

First he referred to Aktuelles Verstehen - or direct observational understanding, where you just observe what people are doing. For example, it is possible to observe what people are doing - for example, you can observe someone chopping wood, or you can even ascertain (with reasonable certainty) someone's emotional state from their body language or facial expression. However, observational understanding alone is not sufficient to explain social action.

The second type of understanding is Eklarendes Verstehen - or Empathetic Understanding - in which sociologists must try to understand the meaning of an act in terms of the motives that have given rise to it. This type of understanding would require you to find out why someone is chopping wood - Are they doing it because they need the firewood, are they just clearing a forest as part of their job, are they working off anger, just doing it because they enjoy it? To achieve this Weber argued that you had to get into the shoes of people doing the activity.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

In this famous work, Weber argued that a set of religious ideas were responsible for the emergence of Capitalism in Northern Europe in the 16-17 th century. Weber argued that we need to understand these ideas and how they made people think about themselves in order to understand the emergence of Capitalism. (NB The emergence of Capitalism is one the most significant social changes in human history)

The video below, from the School of Life, offers a useful summary of Max Weber's ideas about the emergence of Capitalism

Weber's Four Types of Action (and types of society)

Max Weber didn't just believe that individuals shape society - societies encourage certain types of motive for action - for example, the religion of Calvinism encouraged people to save money, which eventually led to capitalism

Weber believes that there are four ideal types of social actions. Ideal types are used as a tool to look at real cases and compare them to the ideal types to see where they fall. No social action is purely just one of the four types.

1. Traditional Social Action: actions controlled by traditions, "the way it has always been done"

2. Affective Social Action: actions determined by one's specific affections and emotional state, you do not think about the consequences

3. Value Rational Social Action: actions that are determined by a conscious belief in the inherent value of a type of behavior (ex: religion)

4. Instrumental-Rational Social Action: actions that are carried out to achieve a certain goal, you do something because it leads to a result

To illustrate these different types of action consider someone "going to school" in terms of these four ideal types: Traditionally, one may attend college because her grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles have as well. They wish to continue the family tradition and continue with college as well. When relating to affective, one may go to school just because they enjoy learning. They love going to college whether or not it will make them broke. With value rational, one may attend college because it's a part of his/her religion that everyone must receive the proper education. Therefore, this person attends college for that reason only. Finally, one may go to college because he/she may want an amazing job in the future and in order to get that job, he/she needs a college degree.
Max Weber was particularly interested in the later of these - he believed that modern societies encouraged 'Instrumental-Action' - that is we are encouraged to do things in the most efficient way (e.g. driving to work) rather than thinking about whether driving to work is the right thing to do (which would be value-rational action.

Weber believed that modern societies were obsessed with efficiency - modernizing and getting things done, such that questions of ethics, affection and tradition were brushed to one side - this has the consequence of making people miserable and leading to enormous social problems. Weber was actually very depressed about this and had a mental breakdown towards the end of his life.

Evaluations of Max Weber's Social Action Theory

- He recognized that we need to understand individual meanings to understand how societies change (unlike Marxism)

- The idea that individual motives can lead to huge structural level changes such as the emergence of Capitalism is especially interesting!

- Still too much focus on society shaping the individual - symbolic interactionism argues that individuals have more freedom to shape their identities.

Negative - there might well be more types of motivation than just four types

Negative - his theory of the emergence of capitalism has been criticized as there is evidence of some forms of capitalism existing BEFORE Protestantism.

Sign Posting

Max Weber's Action Theory is a key social theory usually studies as part of the theory and methods topic for second year sociology.

For an overview of Action theories more generally, including interactionism and labelling theory please see this post which summarises social action theories.

Max Weber's work is also the basis of the 'Interpretivism' part of Positivism versus Interpretivism.

Sources:

Haralambos and Holborne: Sociology Themes and Perspectives

Max Weber: Economy and Society.

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Max Weber's Social Action Theory - ReviseSociology

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Verstehen and the Protestant Ethic are two things Weber is well-known for