Looking back at a month of Symbolic Interactionism

Having just finished our first textbook immediately before our first exam I continue to vacillate between thinking that symbolic interactionism is unusual and difficult understand and that is the most common-sensical theory that seems as if barely is worth the academic effort that is dedicated to it. I think that the truth of the theory lies within the middle ground of those two statements. With Mead and the pragmatists attempt to bring sociology to the masses I think that they have half-succeeded, on the one hand the ideas are very simplistic and flow into one another in a logical way, on the other hand neglecting to view them in context of the greater structure of society I feel is a grave error.
Symbolic interactionism has the advantage of really trying to get at the whys and wherefores of social interactions in a very down to earth and organic style. A huge disadvantage to this is that we lose the look at the greater social impetuses that affect people. I would prefer myself to look at both the individual interactions of people through the SI lense but also to put that lense within the frame of larger social forces that exist.
In the last chapter of our book Symbolic Interactionism the author goes through six case studies to illustrate the usefulness of the theory. One in particular I feel could do with the more expanded look that I am interested in. The study looked at tattooing as a grass-roots kind of social movement. It looked at how in the current generation there is a much higher percentage of people with at least one tattoo and the reasons for that. The study was discussed as examining how people found more justification within their pre-existing social contexts for tattooing(such as marking significant moments, in life, skills, or character traits of the tattooed). While these are all valid reasons for getting tattooed the origins of the social environment that made such justifications possible were not touched upon. To understand why this generation has so many tattoos among us, especially folks who might be otherwise considered to have relatively conservative lifestyles one must look at the greater emphasis on individualism in our society in the latter half of the twentieth century and the propagation of fractured subcultures that came along with it.
This criticism by no means negates the importance of SI for me but it does limit its usefulness, as I feel much sociology is limited in its usefulness. I have found throughout my own life that it seems much easier for anthropologists to unlock the nature of societies that have collapsed or faded away by looking at as complex and complete picture as possible, the Mayan collapse is a good example of this with agricultural, social, and military forces all contributing to the trends that ended the Classical Mayan period.
Symbolic interactionism provides a wonderful perspective to examine why humans do what we do based on the core of our society, the interactions between people, but the limitations that it places upon itself maim it in a most unfortunate way. Symbolic interactions have their roots in our biology as firmly as any other social behaviors do, and this piece should not be neglected as it is what distinguishes our biology from chimpanzees. They are our closest relatives and yet they face a insurmountable (at least as far as biologists can tell right now) barrier between their sophisticated but rather static social interactions and the human ability to use language to create social objects and symbols that allow for abstract thought and a society that is larger than a family clan.
Chimpanzees have a good sense of what their ‘I’ is and also a rudimentary sense of the ‘Me’ and it would appear that they are also able to role-take to a certain degree. However the extent to which they role take seems to be the most limiting factor in their social and evolutionary progression towards sentience. Chimpanzees can teach each other how to use simple tools but there is no concerted effort to make sure everyone in a clan learns a useful new skill as soon as it is discovered, there is no thought of “Well this spear use makes my life easier because I know it, I bet it would also make her life easier if I taught her how.”

Issues with Sociology, I just need to get this out of the way

I imagine that these entries are going to make little or no sense to many people who read them, both because they’re dealing with terminology that some people are unfamiliar with (I have to include them to prove that these ideas are coming from the reading) and also because I am still trying to figure out what this all means. But I am hopeful that by the end of this semester it will all start to make a bit more sense.

I guess my major problem right now is that sociology seems to be a bunch of people trying to attack these tiny aspects of human interaction without considering all the other tiny aspects that everyone else is working on. It seems foolish to me to try to understand human behavior as symbolic interactionists do by just looking at the immediate and momentary interactions between people because you’re ignoring the big picture, conversely it is also limited to just look at overarching views of society without examining the individual. Additionally both of these views tend to ignore both the derivative influences from the past on society and the individual as well as the importance that biology has in determining social interaction. Examining each of these on their own seems to reveal commonsensical truths about human beings, while taking them together creates a overlapping, interwoven, patchworked, and just generally more interesting tapestry of human experience.

I can’t really accept any view of sociology as being truly fleshed out without incorporating all (or at least most) of these pieces: individual, society, context, and biology.

Train Society, is it a Society?

Part of symbolic interactionism’s premise is that in order to have society you need to have communication between people and have them agreeing on a set of symbols and definitions in order to . This idea comes into question with regards to a bunch of strangers traveling on a train. Lets take a situation where no one is talking at all and the train is going along as it should from station to station. In this case the people on the train do not become a reference group, even though they are all sharing the same experience and technically working towards the same goal (getting to their station), However what seems to be the main symbolic communication between them is the wish for isolation and non-communication. One communicates a wish to withdraw and separate from the group by avoiding eye contact, reading a book or newspaper, or sleeping/pretending to sleep. However I think that even in this situation where every actor is asking for isolation there is a society that is formed. It is completely simplistic and very basic society but it still contains people communicating (nonverbally) and agreeing on a set of definitions and symbols (eye movement, tense body language) in order to perform collective actions (keeping to oneself, NOT doing anything to disrupt or disturb the flow of events, encouraging others to do the same) in order to accomplish a goal (getting to their station).

For me it is somewhat weird that it is possible to form a society from human beings interacting nonverbally. Verbal communication is not always our main focus of interaction but it does facilitate all of our symbolic definitions of objects and actions. This situation on the train appears to me to be an interesting case where all of the forms and definitions that we usually have fall away and we’re left with just the symbols themselves. I guess that might actually negate the usual train experience as being a Train Society, because in normal circumstances there will be no dynamic within the society that forces it to evolve and change.

The only time that I have seen change come to the Train Society become nearly completely transmuted into a dynamic situation with the possibility to progress and change was when adversity entered into the situation, when our group goal was so disrupted that it altered everyone’s outlook simultaneously. The situation was that there was a break in the track ahead of the train which caused massive delays and eventually a reversal of which platform was headed Inbound and Outbound. Now normally I would think that this would cause everyone to become more introverted and surly or loud and confrontational. What I found was that it in fact formed us all into a new reference group for each other, instead of people going merrily along we were now all people who had been equally and simultaneously wronged by the MBTA.

Though this shift came from a top-down change which contradicts the tenets of symbolic interactionism the result was to create a situation in which richer interactions happened. Suddenly this group of six people(the group that began talking during the train misadventures) could effectively role-take with the others around them. This caused a conversation to result from this group and while it may have been originally rooted within the issue of being screwed on the train it quickly evolved into each person’s occupation and destination. This made our sub-society within the greater Train Society much more dynamic because we had begun to engage in the true symbolic interaction including the aspects of role-taking, redefinition of symbols, and having it form both the basis and the basis for change within the Train Society.

The first, retrospective as well as present view

So something I’ve been thinking about a lot since the beginning of this class is an incident that happened in my presence on the train. There’s going to be a lot of stories about me on the train here because I ride it for almost an hour every day, and it is a hotbed of interesting social interaction.

So what happened was I was sitting on the train, reading my Kindle(I’ve got to write more about the Kindle and my interactions with strangers) and a very very large man sits down a couple seats away. Now the train is not very crowded at this point but there are still a fair amount of people around. The man sits down and after a moment I realize that he is crying. As per usual on the train, no one interacts with him verbally or attempts to look like they are interested at all. Not only does everyone (including myself I must admit) look uninterested but there is also a group attempt to feign ignorance. I think that this attempt to feign ignorance is our way of expressing guilt about this situation. We are compelled by our social learning to feel empathy for someone who is in pain, and to help if we can. But when you’re on public transportation a different set of rules apply to social interactions, and there are a new set of social objects that come into play.

I think that a lot of people perceive riding on the train as time that they can use to relax away from social pressures and not have to expend energy in interacting with others around them. What I see however is that riding on the train can create more stress and be more draining than standard interactions. When people get onto the train they tend to immediately assess who is in their reference group on the train and where they are located. At least they do half the time, the other half of the time people try and create their bubble of isolation and ignorance (using both as social objects for antisocial activity) by not letting their gaze wander at all; merely staring fixedly ahead, staring at spots their brain is designating as out of people’s line of sight/personal bubble, or by keeping their faces on their distraction tools (books, magazines, phones, ipods, etcetera).
The use of cell phones in public spaces I have also been finding to be very interesting social tools, and are extremely dynamic social symbols. A phone can proclaim many different things depending on social context. Someone hunched over their phone texting or playing a game projects that isolationist aura to the immediate physical world around them, even if they might be participating in ANOTHER social world that is contained in the transmissions from the phone. I’ve gotten totally off my main topic here but everything is flowing into itself so what the hell?

So within phones and within texting lies a new and sociologically undefined world, at least as far as I am aware. Texting has created a new middle ground between talking on the phone and sending an email, which further complicates the levels of social interaction we have today. A very quick gradation scale between the impersonal and personal interactions might be: Facebook/MySpace comments, FB/Myspace messages, emails, texting, instant messaging, phone calls, handwritten letters, and then face to face interaction. In this array five of seven of these social conduits did not exist when today’s adults were in their formative social stages. Its probably unique in human history that so many new modes of social interactions, complete with their own symbolism and set of social objects have been introduced within such a short time span. Not only have these new social modes been introduced within our generation but we all have had a hand in deciding how they are used and what the symbols actually mean. How often has that happened in human history?

Prologue Note

This blog is going to serve as a work/scrapbook for my Sociology of Everyday Life class, at least for the next couple of months. So if you think its boring or that my ideas are totally out there then comment the crap out of me. Or leave, we are in the vast ocean of the internet after all.

I am giving this disclaimer here and now that I promise nothing with regards to the structural rigidity of the writing. Some things will be strictly on point clear, others may meander about as I try to seek my point thought the writing.

Also, if any of you readers have a story or incident to share then please do, the more ideas and information I can cram into myself the better this blog will be!

And of course, thank you for reading.