Prisoner Citizen: Carl Upchurch,Labeling Theory,and Symbolic Interactionism

The life of Carl Upchurch offers a personal example of labeling theory and symbolic interactionism in action. According to labeling theory, behaviors are explained by the reactions received from audiences. Three of the audiences that respond to the behavior of an individual are society at large, agents of social control, and significant others. Upchurch demonstrated how deviant behavior became normal and how being labeled deviant made normal behavior difficult. Symbolic interactionism stresses the importance of learning and social interaction and sees people as being proactive rather than reactive, active and not passive. Through his love of books, Upchurch took charge of his life and moved from being a prisoner citizen to an educator.     

The Space‐Control Theory of Paramedic Scene‐Management

Paramedics provide emergency service in physically hazardous and socially complex situations. These work settings present unique challenges in terms of managing resources and relationships in a multicrisis context, in order to enable the delivery of emergency patient care. Using data obtained from interviewing paramedics, this study demonstrates the usefulness of symbolic interaction theory for context analysis, by analyzing an important aspect of paramedic practice: scene management. Through grounded theory methodology, this study also presents the first interactionism‐based theory of how paramedics manage emergency scenes. This theory emphasizes the critical role of social processes in establishing social control in work spaces.     

The Process of Education by Jerome Bruner

The authors discuss the results of a two-year follow-up study of students who had been enrolled in a course on social work with groups in which the only mechanism for evaluation of learning was a small group oral examination. The findings suggest that the mechanism was an effective educational tool. It tapped a natural resource for learning, was responsive to the self-image of the graduate student, and promoted the integration of theory with practice.     

The Use of the Arts and the Strengths Perspective: The Example of a Course Assignment

This article reports the findings of a study that explored factors affecting the choice to graduate from social work made by active students in one of the three social work departments in Greece. Research focused mainly on structural factors (students' socio-economic background and demographic characteristics, the educational system and the system of admission to higher education). It also touched briefly upon students' prevailing work values. Findings indicate that students' socio-economic background and the educational system's structure play a significant role in their choice to graduate from social work. These structural factors seem to have caused their educational/ occupational choice to be a rather limited one, since approximately 30% of the students decided to graduate as a form of compromise. Students rated intrinsic work values highly, which is consistent with prior research findings.     

Saul D. Alinsky: An Applied Urban Symbolic Interactionist

Urban sociology and symbolic interaction theory share Robert E. Park as a leading figure, yet there has not been a tradition of applying symbolic interaction theory to issues of urban research. A convergence is suggested as urbanists are becoming aware of the importance of sentiments and symbols in organizing and motivating urban behavior, and symbolic interactionists increasingly are becoming interested in social structure. Saul D. Alinsky demonstrated an applied symbolic interactionist perspective in his efforts to develop organizations capable of strengthening community cohesiveness and increasing citizen participation and involvement in local affairs.     

Group Work in Graduate Social Work Education: The Price of Neglect

Abstract

Although social work practice with groups is on the rise, social work education has neglected to prepare students for group work practice. The results of a 1991 survey show that graduate education has practically eliminated group work as a specialized area of study. Most schools offer group work only as an elective, and few students graduate with a course in this subject. Additionally, students in foundation courses learn little about group work theory and have limited or no group field work experience in which to develop practice skills. The authors discuss the consequences of this lack on student learning, faculty development, field education, and the social work curriculum. They make recommendations for schools and CSWE to revitalize group work in the curriculum.     

Role Salience, Role Embracement, and the Symbolic Self-Completion of Sorority Pledges

According to symbolic self-completion theory, people who feel status anxiety may engage in self-symbolization, resulting in the adoption of symbols used to bolster identity. Self-symbolization is an idealized condition that occurs when a person's status is legitimized by others who accept these symbols as valid status markers. While some studies support this perspective, others have identified blind spots and suggest revision. The current research suggests that role theory be incorporated with this perspective. In this article, the sorority experience is analyzed as a rite of passage in which high levels of role salience produce role embracement and symbolic self-completion. Symbolic self-completion theory is made more robust by analyzing the use of visual symbols as expressions of social roles.     

African Americans and Graduate Social Work Education

This article reports on a study of career influences for a sample of African-American and other black graduates of MSW programs. The study isolated significant relationships between enrollment influences and selected demographic and career-related variables. ”Very important“ influences were career advancement, acquisition of new skills, professional status and credibility, and understanding professionalism in social work. Desire for professional development in social work was the dominant influence. Findings suggest that recruitment of African-American/black graduate social work students should incorporate strategies that address issues of job satisfaction, and recognize career priorities and professional aspirations. Implications for graduate social work education are discussed.     

Media meta-capital: Extending the range of Bourdieu’s field theory

This article addresses a general problem in media sociology – how to understand the media both as an internal production process and as a general frame for categorizing the social world, with specific reference to a version of this problem in recent work on media within Bourdieu’s field-based tradition of research (work previously reviewed by Rodney Benson in Theory and Society28). It argues that certain problems arise in reconciling this work’s detailed explanations of the media field’s internal workings (and the interrelations of that field’s workings to the workings of other fields) and general claims made about the “symbolic power” of media in a broader sense. These problems can be solved, the author argues, by adopting the concept of meta-capital developed by Bourdieu himself in his late work on the state, and returning to the wider framework of symbolic system and symbolic power that was important in Bourdieu’s social theory before it became dominated by field theory. Media, it is proposed, have meta-capital over the rules of play, and the definition of capital (especially symbolic capital), that operate within a wide range of contemporary fields of production. This level of explanation needs to be added to specific accounts of the detailed workings of the media field. The conclusion points to questions for further work, including on the state’s relative strength and the media’s meta-capital that must be carried out through detailed empirical work on a global comparative basis.     

Extending the Symbolic Interactionist Theory of Interaction Processes: A Conceptual Outline

This article outlines the elements of a more robust symbolic interactionist theory of interpersonal processes. I argue that George Herbert Mead's conceptualization of interaction processes can be extended to explain not only micro‐level social processes but also key elements of meso‐ and macro‐level dynamics. By expanding Mead's and more recent symbolic interactionist theorizing, and incorporating key ideas from other theoretical traditions outside symbolic interactionism proper, it becomes possible to develop a theory of interaction that fills in important conceptual gaps in theories on the dynamics of micro‐, meso‐, and macro‐level social phenomena.     

Considerate Exchange: Exploring Social Exchange on Family Farms

Much theory about economic action has emphasized tensions between exchange and care for others. Based on a mixed methods study of family farms, this article shows how considerateness may be conceptualized in social exchange theory and how such conceptualization facilitates research on interaction among close relations. The article shows how scholars may combine an exchange purpose typology with existent concepts of social exchange to analyze multiple dimensions of exchange. Data from family farms illustrate how various forms of exchange unfold among close relations. The article sheds light on actors’ management of emotional and moral ties in economic matters. It argues that social exchange theory has an unfulfilled potential in research on economic interaction among close relations.     

‘A great job and a family’: work narratives and the work and family interaction

This article investigated how work narratives of dual-earner families are materially and symbolically configured in discourses of reconciliation of work and home life. Following critical studies of the work–family interaction, this research takes into consideration symbolic and social structures and tries to look into the interrelation of factors such as job resources, job satisfaction, levels of autonomy with the self-esteem and sense of ‘self’ which parents derive from their paid work. Hochschild's concept of ‘emotional culture’ is used to explore how parents' experience of work is intertwined to their occupational groups and how it is associated with different narratives of work–family interaction. This study is conducted through qualitative methods, using in-depth semi-structured interviews on a sample of 27 dual-earner families. The data collected are composed of in-depth accounts that are then examined through the method of narrative analysis. The data indicate that, for divergent occupational levels, work generates different material and symbolic resources, which account for divergent narratives of work and home. The sociological analysis of occupational levels with the associated emotional culture of work and family then provides an exploratory model for understanding the links between social class and work–family interaction.     

Interaction Theory in the Federal Republic of Germany: Development,Current Position,Themes, and Problems

After the end of World War II in West Germany, action and interaction theories and phenomenological sociology occupied only fringe positions. At the end of the 1960s, criticism of the prevalent neopositivistic research methodology, systems theory, and the rapidly spreading critical theory increased. This, coupled with the positive reception given symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology from the United States, caused interaction theories to flourish. Today they are among the four or five main schools of thought in West German sociology. In methodological work, the “interpretative” or “communicative” social research of the time developed the narrative interview and life history method. Group discussion and participant observation were also used for interactionist social research. A survey of the subjects interactionists have covered in their research shows how widely interaction theory has been applied. The main themes of current interaction theory are: (1) conceptualizing the difference between unpremeditated behavior and meaningful action, (2) formulating a theory that covers both “structure” and “action”, and (3) developing an interactionist macro theory. The future of interaction theory is analyzed and assessed optimistically.     

Interaction Ritual Theory and Structural Symbolic Interactionism

This article develops a comparison between structural approaches to symbolic interaction, as described by Sheldon Stryker (1968, 1980, 2008) , and interaction ritual theory, elaborated by Randall Collins (1981, 1998, 2004) . The value of this comparison lies in both the similarities and differences between the perspectives: each is committed to developing empirically grounded, general knowledge and emphasizes interaction as an emergent unit of sociological analysis. However, their disparate intellectual heritages lead them to stake out different positions regarding the nature of interaction, the self, and social structure. We suggest that the differences between structural symbolic interaction and interaction ritual theory offer important areas for theoretical innovation, and we highlight a few directions that seem especially promising.     

Thinking with the Mind,Syncing with the Body: Ballet as Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Interaction

Symbolic interactionist theory describes self‐consciousness as arising through symbolic interaction. I use one empirical case, ballet training, to suggest that symbolic interaction can, by producing self‐consciousness, cultivate unself‐consciousness. Using in‐depth interviews with twenty‐three individuals reporting on training experiences in six countries and twenty‐three American states, I show that dancers can learn, through self‐conscious symbolic interaction, how it feels to embody what an audience sees, as they strive to train their bodies to portray an institutionalized aesthetic. The embodiment of technique facilitates a markedly unself‐conscious “flow” experience while performing. In contrast, having an acute awareness of embodying an incompatible physiology inhibits flow and often motivates dancers to self‐select out of ballet. These interactionist sources of “nonsymbolic” interaction both evoke and suppress “mind” through social interaction.     

The Role of the Graduate School of Social Work in Criminal Justice Higher Education

This article deals with the extent to which graduate schools of social work are providing education in the field of criminal justice. It raises the question of whether the two-year professional social work model can be adopted for graduate education in criminal justice. A detailed survey taken in 1972 revealed that graduate schools of social work provided insignificant course offerings in the broad field of criminal justice.

The article concludes by showing that graduate schools of social work are appropriate vehicles for criminal justice type offerings, while at the same time indicating that those concerned with criminal justice have the opportunity to experiment with the social work model.     

Symbolic Interaction with Consumer Products: An Affect Control Theory Approach

Symbolic interactionism is one of the few social psychology perspectives that recognizes the important role of physical artifacts, including consumer products, in social life. Consumer products are artifacts people can use to maintain the expressive order within social life – the order that is embedded within the shared meanings of a culture. As a formal theory of symbolic interactionism, affect control theory emphasizes culturally shared affective meaning, the impressions produced within social events, and identity processes that rely on those cultural meanings and social events. We contend that affect control theory provides a framework for understanding and researching how consumer products influence people's social experience and interaction. First, we specifically explore how affect control theory's concepts of affective meaning, identity modification, and impression management can be applied to understanding consumer products. Building on this foundation, we then consider how affect control theory might also contribute to three new research directions: social interaction with consumer products, affective design of consumer products, and the prosumer identity created from consumer products. Our conclusion is that affect control theory provides sociologists with a means of exploring the important and fascinating questions that emerge when we consider people's symbolic interaction with consumer products.     

Inequality and the Self: Exploring Connections from an Interactionist Perspective

Symbolic interactionism provides a major contribution to understanding inequality by illuminating the various manifestations and contexts of inequality at the micro, everyday level of social life. Drawing on a spectrum of symbolic interactionist theory and research, we examine the range of symbolic and interactional manifestations of social inequality, the consequences of being the object of patterned interactional affronts, and the strategies people use to negotiate interactional stigmatization in everyday life. We argue that symbolic interaction's unique contribution to understanding inequality results from two of the perspective's central features. First, symbolic interactionism emphasizes the necessity of investigating social life in situated social interaction. Second, it highlights social actors' capacities to interpret and construct lines of action rather than respond directly to the stimuli they encounter. Symbolic interactionist research and theory thus contribute to a more complex understanding of social stratification than that provided by perspectives focused exclusively on macroscopic structural factors.     

“Embodying” dirty work: A review of the literature

This article reviews the growing literature on dirty work, i.e., work that is seen as disgusting or degrading and argues for a more “embodied” understanding of such work. It points to a tendency in the literature to focus on the nature of the task or role and on social and moral dimensions of the work at the expense of its material and embodied aspects. The latter are discussed through three, interrelated themes: “embodied suitability” whereby forms of dirty work are seen as suitable for some “working bodies” and not for others; “staining” which is presented as both a material and a symbolic process; and the role of work practices in both supporting and undermining ideological constructions around the work. The article concludes by arguing for a more comprehensive approach which includes both the material and the symbolic into accounts of such work.     

Symbolic Interaction and Applied Social Research: A Focus on Translational Science

In symbolic interaction, a traditional yet unfortunate and unnecessary distinction has been made between basic and applied research. The argument has been made that basic research is intended to generate new knowledge, whereas applied research is intended to apply knowledge to the solution of practical (social and organizational) problems. I will argue that the distinction between basic and applied research in symbolic interaction is outdated and dysfunctional. The masters of symbolic interactionist thought have left us a proud legacy of shaping their scholarly thinking and inquiry in response to and in light of practical issues of the day (e.g., Park and Blumer). Current interactionist work continues this tradition in topical areas such as social justice studies. Applied research, especially in term of evaluation and needs assessment studies, can be designed to serve both basic and applied goals. Symbolic interaction provides three great resources to do this. The first is its orientation to dynamic sensitizing concepts that direct research and ask questions instead of supplying a priori and often impractical answers. The second is its orientation to qualitative methods, and appreciation for the logic of grounded theory. The third is interactionism's overall holistic approach to interfacing with the everyday life world. The primary illustrative case here is the qualitative component of the evaluation of an National Institutes of Health‐funded, translational medical research program. The qualitative component has provided interactionist‐inspired insights into translational research, such as examining cultural change in medical research in terms of changes in the form and content of formal and informal discourse among scientists; delineating the impact of significant symbols such as “my lab” on the social organization of science; and appreciating the essence of the self‐concept “scientist” on the increasingly bureaucratic and administrative identities of medical researchers. This component has also contributed to the basic social scientific literature on complex organizations and the self.