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.”