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.