Symbolic Interactionism

[Dreamwoven]

This clumsy phrase is well explained in the following Wikipedia item:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_interactionism

I have several books in that tradition. See http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?86568-From-My-Bookshelves. I was fascinated by it in the mid-1960s. I still am. A good introduction is found in Erving Goffman The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Anchor Books, 1959.

Is anyone else on LitNet familiar with this perspective, however fleetingly?

[Dreamwoven]

One of my all-time favourites is this short piece by Erving Goffman "On Cooling the Mark Out: some aspects of adaptation to failure". Published in Psychiatry in 1952, you can read and download it here: http://infofranpro.wdfiles.com/local--files/19520101-on-cooling/19520101%20On%20cooling.pdf

It starts like this:
"In cases of criminal fraud, victims find they must suddenly adapt themselves to the loss of sources of
security and status which they had taken for granted. A consideration of this adaptation to loss can lead
us to an understanding of some relations in our society between involvements and the selves that are
involved. In the argot of the criminal world, the term "mark" refers to any individual who is a victim or
prospective victim of certain forms of planned illegal exploitation. The mark is the sucker‑the person who
is taken in. An instance of the operation of any particular racket, taken through the full cycle of its steps or
phases, is sometimes called a play. The persons who operate the racket and "take" the mark are
occasionally called operators.
"The confidence game‑the con, as its practitioners call it‑is a way of obtaining money under false
pretenses by the exercise of fraud and deceit. The con differs from politer forms of financial deceit in
important ways. The con is practiced on private persons by talented actors who methodically and
regularly build up informal social relationships just for the purpose of abusing them; white‑collar crime is
practiced on organizations by persons who learn to abuse positions of trust which they once filled
faithfully. The one exploits, poise; the other, position. Further, a con man is someone who accepts a
social role in the underworld community; he is part of a brotherhood whose members make no pretense
to one another of being "legit." A white‑collar criminal, on the other hand, has no colleagues, al-though he
may have an associate with whom he plans his crime and a wife to whom he confesses it.

[YesNo]

It is the first I've heard of this, but I know very little about sociology. From an initial reading I like the idea of focusing on human beings as agents who use meaning derived from social interactions. I agree with the five central ideas behind symbolic interactionism, which I paraphrase like this:

1) There are no human individuals, only groups of human beings.
2) Each human being cannot be reduced to conditioning, but thinks and so is an active agent.
3) Our environment is not sensed directly but through non-random meanings.
4) Cause comes from the present not the past.
5) Human beings are active, not conditioned.

This suggests to me we have minimal free will and our evolution is group based and altruistic.

[Danik 2016]

I will read the article later on, but the opening sounds ironic for someone who lives in a country where so many crimes happen daily.
Yes/No it seems our present evolution is every thing else than altruistic. I never saw so many cases when people seem even to enjoy doing harm.

[Dreamwoven]

Symbolic interactionism is much like YesNo says, but it is more than that. I can't think of a better way to describe it than try to describe it in this thread.

Critical Criminologists describe the US as one huge Gulag, with much crime and an ever stricter and more drastic imprisonment, many rules to control and also to break. So Danik is on the right track but more police in Sweden is one cry that those on the right make. Its a knee-jerk reaction, but solves nothing.

[Danik 2016]

I wonder what crimes are comited in Sweden, DW.
I wouldn´t public the Brazilian, nay the São Paulo numbers, out of shame and disgust.

[Ecurb]

One of the key concepts in Symbolic Interactionism is the "Looking Glass Self", introduced by Charles Cooley and further elucidated by Erving Goffman. The notion is that an individual's self-image is derived both from cultural constructs and from the feedback he gets from other members of society. When the self-image is at conflict with the image reflected back to him from others, this is called "cognitive dissonance" and causes all kinds of psychological problems.

So if Donald Trump (for example) sees himself as an insightful decision-maker, but others see him as a benighted waffler (and make their views public), a "cognitive dissonance" exists between Trump's self image and the feedback he is getting from others (assuming Trump is like other people in that he cares what other think).

[YesNo]

I will read the article later on, but the opening sounds ironic for someone who lives in a country where so many crimes happen daily.
Yes/No it seems our present evolution is every else than altruistic. I never saw so many cases when people seem even to enjoy doing harm.

The altruism doesn't always look pretty especially to outsiders of a group. It is support for one's own group to the point of self-sacrifice which might mean harming members who are not part of the group such as in warfare.

[Danik 2016]

The problem Yes/No is that there is much gratuitous harming going on. I remember reading more than forty years ago about an experiment with caged rats or mice. I don´t remember the details any more but one of the conclusions of the experiment was that when the rodents got too numerous they stated to kill each other.

[Danik 2016]

One of the key concepts in Symbolic Interactionism is the "Looking Glass Self", introduced by Charles Cooley and further elucidated by Erving Goffman. The notion is that an individual's self-image is derived both from cultural constructs and from the feedback he gets from other members of society. When the self-image is at conflict with the image reflected back to him from others, this is called "cognitive dissonance" and causes all kinds of psychological problems.

So if Donald Trump (for example) sees himself as an insightful decision-maker, but others see him as a benighted waffler (and make their views public), a "cognitive dissonance" exists between Trump's self image and the feedback he is getting from others (assuming Trump is like other people in that he cares what other think).
Your perfect explanation and specially the example reminded me of this short story. There are some translation problems but one gets the idea.
http://www.brazzil.com/pages/shjul95a.htm

[Dreamwoven]

There is a person history behind this particular article by Goffman. Ecurb mentions Cooley's The Looking Glass Self. and it is very pertinent to this discussion. The Aberdeen Lecturer who introduced me to symbolic interaction, Geoff Sharp, greatly influenced my thinking. He used to put what he was saying into "inverted commas" by raising both hands to about ear-height on either side of his head and twisting them, so making a verbal quote out of it. I did the same in the one and only seminar there was on symbolic interaction at Minnesota University. That lecturer gave me a complement on my participation by saying that I was "...thoroughly imbued with the symbolic interactionist perspective." That was in 1971, something I will never forget.

I was sorry to have to log out yesterday evening and so miss this discussion that followed. But I always log out for the day before 6.45 pm, while both YesNo and Danik are on similar times in the Americas.

[Dreamwoven]

Geoff Sharp used this article to show how members of staff and students could be "cooled out", a way of getting such people to accept their rejection by the Department, or by anyone really. He would say "X was cooled..." So this article was one I would never forget.

[Dreamwoven]

I wonder what crimes are comited in Sweden, DW.
I wouldn´t public the Brazilian, nay the São Paulo numbers, out of shame and disgust.

Danik, Sweden is far from the ideal crime-free society, I'm sorry to say.

[YesNo]

The problem Yes/No is that there is much gratuitous harming going on. I remember reading more than forty years ago about an experiment with caged rats or mice. I don´t remember the details any more but one of the conclusions of the experiment was that when the rodents got too numerous they stated to kill each other.

I have heard that the pecking order of chickens allows them to live more closely together in factory farms and makes them easier to raise. Maybe something like that is missing with the rats. Increasing their numbers is not enough to increase their loyalty to this larger collective. What looks like gratuitous violence to the victims' families (their groups) when a suicide bomber blows himself up may look like an act of altruistic self-sacrifice to members of his own group.

[Danik 2016]

Geoff Sharp used this article to show how members of staff and students could be "cooled out", a way of getting such people to accept their rejection by the Department, or by anyone really. He would say "X was cooled..." So this article was one I would never forget.

Never mind about the time diferences DW.The discussion continues as long as there is anything to add to it.
The example of the ears as inverted commas is very sugestive.
Maybe you would like to have a look at the short story link of "The Mirror"I posted as an answer to Ecurb. It fictionalises (previous to theory)a problem related to the image one has of oneself +dealing with the image others have of one.
Here a bit more about Machado de Assis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machado_de_Assis

[Danik 2016]

I have heard that the pecking order of chickens allows them to live more closely together in factory farms and makes them easier to raise. Maybe something like that is missing with the rats. Increasing their numbers is not enough to increase their loyalty to this larger collective. What looks like gratuitous violence to the victims' families (their groups) when a suicide bomber blows himself up may look like an act of altruistic self-sacrifice to members of his own group.

I never heard about a pecking order of chickens. I guess there is some drinking order of cats.
I agree with you about the suicidal bomber. But when I heard about it for the first time I realised that the general view on death and suicide was changing. Giving one´s life for a group or cause had hitherto been an usually individual sacrifice. Now this kind of sacrifice was massified.

[Dreamwoven]

The Machado de Assis Wikipedia entry is very interesting. What a pity his work is not so well-known here...

[Danik 2016]

The Machado de Assis Wikipedia entry is very interesting. What a pity his work is not so well-known here...

I believe there is a collection of his tales in English and his most important novels are also translated. If you are interested, I´ll look them up for you.

[Dreamwoven]

Thanks, Danik. I tried a search but came up with nothing. Anything that he wrote in the symbolic interactionist tradition would be good!

[Dreamwoven]

I mean of course the early interactionists like Cooley, George Herbert Mead, Everett Hughes, Robert E. Park, Emile Durkheim, W. I. Thomas, and others in the early Chicago School coinciding with the life of Machado de Assis.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_(sociology)

[Danik 2016]

I am not sure if you read the story in this link I put up as an answer to Ecurb.
It is a short story called "The Mirror", but very much related to the theme own image +
perception of the image the others have of one:

http://www.brazzil.com/pages/shjul95a.htm

[Dreamwoven]

Your link is interesting and shows how he used similar concepts of the human soul as the early Chicago School did. But there seems to have been no awareness of the work of the early symbolic interactionists. The French sociologist Durkheim in particular might have been relevant.

[Danik 2016]

Machado de Assis must have read some Psychology, but I don´t think that he knew about the early Chicago School. It was probably an independent criation.
I know that he read English because Sterne was one of his influences.

[Dreamwoven]

There was, of course, no internet then. Today we take it for granted, but the world was much bigger so people just worked within its limitations.

[Dreamwoven]

Erving Goffman epitomises for me the symbolic interactionist perspective. His book Asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates Anchor Books (1961) is another of his classics. Today, I have bought this for my bookshelves.

[Dreamwoven]

Once I have refreshed my memory its re-read I will write about this in later posts.

[Dreamwoven]

Erving Goffman coined the term Total Institution and in Asylums he divides them into 5 sub-types:
(1) Institutions to care for persons both incapable and harmless - blind, aged, orphaned and the indigent.
(2) other people who are incapable of looking after themselves but who are an unintended threat to the community - TB sanitaria, mental hospitals and leprosaria.
(3) To protect the community from those assumed to be intentional dangers to it: jails, penitentiaries, POW camps and concentration camps.
(4) Established to pursue some work activity: army barracks, ships, boarding schools, work camps, colonial compounds and large mansions where there are many workers who look after the place.
(5) Retreats from the world, often religious: abbeys, monasteries convents and other cloisters, while still retaining a trainee function for new members.

I have decided not to continue contributing to this thread. Like my astronomy thread I will leave it as it is and move on to other threads I follow.

[Danik 2016]

Thanks for the excellent summary DW. I read the book at the university at a time when this type of institutition was questioned here In Brazil. From then to today some of them, notably the jails have become much worse. In the area of mental health today exist day hospitals so that can be considered a change for the better.
I´m asking your leave to eventualy reopen the astronomy thread for posting astronomic news. It would be a pity just to get it buried under the old threads. But if you prefer we leave it as it is.

[Dreamwoven]

There is no need to leave the thread as it is, like some sort of ossified remains. I am happy for you or anyone else to post astronomical news in it, in fact it is a good idea...

[Danik 2016]

Thanks, DW!

[Dreamwoven]

Of course, that should be symbolic interactionist thread, the astronomical thread is for astronomy.

[Dreamwoven]

Of course, that should be symbolic interactionist thread, the astronomical thred is for astronomy

[Danik 2016]

To be sure, DW!

[Dreamwoven]

Here is a link to all the work of Erving Goffman: http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/goffmanbio.html, the original symbolic interactionist of the study of individuals in interaction.

[Dreamwoven]

Goffman did a study of interaction in subsistence farming (crofting) in the Shetland Islands of Scotland ("Communication conduct in an island community",1953) as his unpublished Ph.D. in sociology at Chicago University. Everything in his life's work stemmed from that!

[Dreamwoven]

I've been reading Erving Goffman Asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates (Penguin, 1961). He tries to understand how people end up in an asylum. There is little hard information on this, but certainly a small percentage realise that life outside is hard for them to cope, and choose to enter an asylum. We also need to bear in mind that in the early 1960s it would have been even harder to find advice than is the case today, while considerable variations may be evident between countries. For someone trying to hold a job down but finding it increasingly problematic this may be something that emerges at an earlier stage than when the initial problems are "managed" by a sympathetic spouse or other relative.

Much more common is when their closest relative realises that things are amiss and they seek advice about what to do. This is the start of the pre-patient phase, involving abandonment, disloyalty, and embitterment. Goffman writes about the existence of a "betrayal funnel", where the next of kin seeks advice from his or her doctor. Already here there is the start of the betrayal funnel which perhaps ends with the spouse taking advice privately, and recommending that they together talk to someone who knows about these things.

Senility and admission to an old-peoples home is usually left as long as possible but here too there is a "career". Goffman writes very little about this, but problems maintaining basic bodily hygiene will need addressing sooner or later, and of other matters such as dementia I have equally little knowledge.

[Danik 2016]

I read Asylum in the 70ies, when I still was as student at university. I guess many things have changed since them for better or for worse.
I noticed that in the city where I live several mental hospitals were closed. They are not so necessary any more these days because some of the mental illnesses can be treated at home or at day hospitals.
The situations of the prisons and the prisoners worsened terribly. These days I heard that there are about 600.000 prisoners in the whole country.
As for the aging people I think that people are getting older now than the y did in the 70ies. That poses the need for more retirement homes and also medical treatments.

[Dreamwoven]

I don't think Asylums involved any active "treatment", they were basically storage places for the mentally ill. That was in the 1960s, I don't think there is really any difference today, either. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_hospital