The most critical issue facing the ASA

The ASA worries that it may be allowing organizational fragmentation to contribute to intellectual disarray in the discipline. ASA should recognize that the increase in the number of sociologists has made it easier to start new, economically viable organizations, with their own journals, prizes, and meetings. A serious problem facing ASA is that the American Sociological Review shows an editorial bias toward quantitative research. Sociologists need to strengthen alternative organizations-regional and specialty-especially among groups which differ politically from ASA, so that it will not try to speak for all of us. He is co-editor (wih Michal M. McCall) ofSymbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies (1990, Chicago: University of Chicago Press).     

Shopping as Symbolic Interaction: Race,Class, and Gender in the Toy Store

Presented as the Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in San Francisco, California, on August 15, 2004, this article discusses the relevance of symbolic interactionism for understanding labor processes. Based upon the author's clerking experiences in two toy stores, she proposes that interactions between clerks and customers reproduce social inequalities based on race, gender, and class.     

KEEPING SYMBOLIC INTERACTION SAFE FROM SEMIOTICS: A RESPONSE TO HARMAN

This article provides a critique of the particular way in which Lesley D. Harman has proposed to accommodate Symbolic Interaction to semiotic theory and method. Harman's argument rests on a belief in the reality of the nature/culture dimension as prior to semiotic or sociological theory. According to Harman's view, nature is the realm of determinism, culture is the realm of freedom, and social theory ought to align itself with freedom and culture. A semiotic alternative based on Peirce's concept of the sign is suggested. The alternative socio-semiotic approach opens the possibility of studying both cultural determinism and creative processes in nature.     

Symbolic Interactionism and I

This is a story of my involvement with symbolic interactionism and its influence on my thinking. The process included the following phases or stages: (1) an early foundation from Florian Znaniecki, David Hume, and Adam Smith; (2) participation in “the second Chicago school,” especially with Blumer, Hughes, and colleagues; (3) contact with an expanded circle of symbolic interactionists, working on various theories and concepts in many contexts, often united by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction; (4) attempts at understanding and conceptualizing the interweave of my own work in several areas with my personal experiences; (5) use and development of four basic concepts: social roles, sentiments, identities, and self‐concept.     

The Secret Downing Street Memo,the One Percent Doctrine,and the Politics of Truth: A Performance Text

Presented to the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Montreal, Canada, on August 7, 2006, this performance text is a critique of the Bush administration and its reliance on science, or evidence‐based models of inquiry (SBR). SBR raises issues concerning the politics of truth and evidence. These issues intersect with the ways in which a given political regime fixes facts to fit ideology. Three versions of SBR are discussed. A model of science as disruptive cultural practice is outlined. I locate the interactionist project in the discourses surrounding the global war on terror and the war in Iraq. I conclude by calling for a merger of critical pedagogy with a prophetic, feminist postpragmatism.     

The ten commandments of writing

Whatever our areas and methods, social scientists share a common problem: how to write so as to foster communication. I present a set of propositions to lighten and brighten sociological writing. Sociologists ought not be afraid of using these tropes and techniques of literary writers. Each sociologist must develop a personal style that sparks an audience. Yet, this poses a challenge for those not trained. Writing is a craft that must be developed. As Wyndham Lewis noted: “It is dangerous to live, but to write is much more so.” He is the author ofTalking Sociology. Presented to the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, August 1987, Chicago, Illnois.     

Symbolic convergence of local wisdom in cross–cultural collaborative social responsibility: Indonesian case

Lately, the CSR policies of Multinational Corporations in Indonesia show certain improvements. It cannot be denied that at present the CSRs of Multinational Corporations in Indonesia indicate they are visibly supporting/involved in assisting the attainment of some of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs). This study examines the CSR activities of several Multinational Corporations in Indonesia, in particular how they adjust/adapt to the local wisdom in their efforts to attain their CSR goals.The main theory applied in our study is the Symbolic Convergence Theory, supported by the Accommodation Communication Theory. Three Multinational Corporations in Indonesia were chosen as subjects of this research. Analysis is based on the Collaborative Social Responsibility Model (Kartikawangi, 2015) and Cross Cultural Communication Competence in Business Interaction models (Kartikawangi et al., 2016).At present “positive” actions are increasing by companies in efforts to better understand the society they are working in. Clearer understandings of local, regional and national societal factors are required to enhance the corporation’s product development programs, marketing strategies, and CSR strategies. Local, regional and national societal groups are in positions to choose what should be provided by the companies in achieving shared and practical Symbolic Convergence meanings. The societal groups actively present their aspirations, but also the aspirations and local wisdom that must be absorbed by the company. Symbolic Convergence in the relationship is built by all interacting parties. These interactions include the companies, government and local society. Meanwhile, the media also assist in developing awareness through the dissemination of various balanced information in the form of social disclosures.     

Interviewing by comment: An adjunct to the direct question

Interviewing by direct question has long been the sociologist's favored means of collecting data. This article seeks to expand understanding of the research interview by proposingthe comment as a supplementary data gathering technique. Several methodological and theoretical considerations are discussed that indicate the appropriateness of interviewing by comment for the general purpose of discovery and for eliciting information about certain behaviors, events, and relationships. In order to demonstrate concretely the utility of interviewing by comment, eight types of comments that can be employed for a variety of research purposes are presented and illustrated.An earlier edition of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, Toronto, Canada, 1981.     

David R. Maines: Embedding Symbolic Interactionism at the Heart of Sociology

David R. Maines was a key founder of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, and a champion of symbolic interactionist sociology. Maines fought against characterizations of symbolic interactionism as astructural and “subjectivist.” He was adamant that symbolic interactionism offered vital perspectives on the study of social structure and organization, and that it was compatible with a variety of research methods. He played a vital role in developing narrative sociology and bringing narrative scholarship from communication studies to sociological audiences. In this retrospective on his life and career, I detail what Maines saw as the five central features of symbolic interactionism: (1) interpretation and meaning, (2) communication, (3) temporality and process, (4) agency, and (5) dialectical thinking. I then examine four interrelated themes of Maines' sociological contributions: (1) temporality, (2) debunking myths about interactionism, (3) mesostructure, and (4) narrative sociology. A video abstract is available at https://youtu.be/YodjvXbo51Q .     

Couch the Bricoleur: Using Ethnographic and Laboratory Traditions to Establish Data Careers

Carl Couch reinvigorated the Iowa School of Symbolic Interaction by combining the theoretical and methodological tenets of ethnography and laboratory science. He thus resembled a bricoleur, or researcher who masters several seemingly diverse practices in order to create a seamless whole. Couch's new Iowa School also produced a bricolage, or a sum total of research findings, that I call a data career. This article pays tribute to Couch the bricoleur and his bricolage by elaborating on his data career and discussing how he created ethnographies in the laboratory. I further link the notions of bricoleur, data careers, and ethnographies in the laboratory with Couch's democratic vision. I contextualize this vision in light of a particular representative-constituent study (RCS) which served as a metaphor for Couch's pragmatic outlook.     

The Crowd and Collective Behavior: Bringing Symbolic Interaction Back In

Presented as the Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in August 2005, this article's objective is to illustrate the importance of symbolic interaction in the formation of temporary gatherings, in the dynamic alternation between individual and collective actions that comprise those gatherings, and in the dispersal processes that bring such gatherings to an end. In reviewing the phenomena to be explained, I also call attention to the limitations of the concepts of “the crowd” and of “collective behavior.” Finally, to make sense of the dynamic variation and alternation between individual and collective actions, and the variation in the latter, I champion and extend G. H. Mead's theory of the act as a closed‐loop, negative‐feedback model of purposive action. No lesser model of agency and action is adequate to the challenge of understanding and explaining the phenomena in question.     

Book reviews / Comptes rendus

Book reviewed in this article:
BRUCE WINTERHALDER and ERIC SMITH (eds), Hunter-gatherer foraging strategies.
ROBERT PAINE (ed.), Politically Speaking: Cross Cultural Studies of Rhetoric.
JOHN C. KENNEDY, Holding the Line: Ethnic Boundaries in a Northern Labrador Community. Social and Economic Studies no. 27.
GREGORY S. KEALEY, Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism 1867–1892.
RAYMOND BOUDON, The Crisis in Sociology: Problems of Sociological Epistemology.
BERNARD P. COHEN, Developing Sociological Knowledge: Theory and Method.
ROBERT K. MERTON and MATILDA WHITE RILEY (eds), Sociological Traditions from Generation to Generation: Glimpses of the American Experience.
CRAIG C. PINDER and LARRY MOORE (eds), Middle Range Theory and the Study of Organizations.
J. DAVID LEWIS and RICHARD R. SMITH, American Sociology and Pragmatism: Mead, Chicago Sociology and Symbolic Interaction     

The Theoretical Frame of Symbolic Interactions: A Contextualist,Social Science*

Symbolic interactionism is differentiated from conventional “natural science” approaches as an exemplification of pure “social science.” This alternative philosophy of science is described and contrasted with mechanistic natural science along lines set forth by Pepper and recently elaborated by Sarbin: it is a contextualist mode of science concerned with the qualitative analysis of human conduct in interpersonal situations. Validity is assessed by qualitative confirmation—does it fit? and is it useful?—not by reference to a causal theory of truth. Symbolic interactionism represents an acausal science independent of the categories and presumptions of mechanistic natural science, which is logically and practically adequate in its own right.     

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.     

G. H. MEAD'S SOCIAL BEHAVIORISM VS. THE ASTRUCTURAL BIAS OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM*

Symbolic inleractionism has been criticized for having an astructural bias. This paper presents a response to that criticism by examining the ontological stance contained in Mead's social behaviorism and contrasting it with the ontological stance of symbolic interactionism's chief architect, Herbert Blumer. Mead's social behaviorism is shown to be a nondualist philosophy of conduct based solidly on conceptions of the human community and of individual conduct as organized on the basis of social acts–a view not shared by Blumer.     

The Synthetic Situation: Interactionism for a Global World

Presented as the Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 1, 2008, this article rethinks central assumptions of the interaction order as conceptualized by Goffman and others with respect to global domains of activity. 1 It proposes two new concepts, that of the synthetic situation and that of time transactions. Synthetic situations are situations that include electronically transmitted on‐screen projections that add informational depth and new response requirements to the “ecological huddle” ( Goffman 1964 :135) of the natural situation. Global situations invariably include such components; we also find that temporal forms of integration may substitute for joint territoriality of copresence in the natural situation. Based on research on global currency trading and other empirical examples, I identify four types of synthetic situations and describe the synthetic situation's informational character, its ontological fluidity, and the phenomenon that synthetic situations may become role‐others for participants. I outline the response system of synthetic situations, sketching out the concepts of response presence and its implications in this context as well as the importance of embodiment. I also discuss time transactions and the idea of fatefulness as a symbolic charge linked to the synthetic components of the situation.     

Disposable Objects: Ethecology,Waste, and Maternal Afterlives

This essay queries the relationship between humans and their coveted and discarded objects. It is a meditation on object disposability, with keen attention to how maternal life and forms of waste making are vital to a reconsideration of what it means to be human. The essay unfolds through autotheoretical sketches and engagements with various texts, including Fabrice Monteiro’s photographic collection The Prophecy (2015) and Allan Sekula and Noël Burch’s The Forgotten Space: A Film Essay Seeking to Understand the Contemporary Maritime World in Relation to the Symbolic Legacy of the Sea (2010).