What is symbolic interactionism?

In modern sociological science, there are several fairly large theories that can be called paradigmatic. Symbolic interactionism is one of such theories, which is based on the fact that interactions (interactions) of people in society occur through communication, which is based on the production and recognition of certain symbols. The person reacts to the stimuli of the external natural and social world indirectly, comprehends reality through images, signs, symbols and exchanges these symbols in the process of interpersonal communication. Symbolic interactionism, whose prominent representatives were American sociologists JG Mead (1863-1931) and G. Blumer (1900-1986), analyzes social interactions in their symbolic content. The basic concept of this theory is interaction (interaction), which is the exchange of symbols.

The symbolic interactionism of J. Meade is based on the fact that the individual's representation of reality is determined by his experience of communicating with other people, and especially his perception of the world, himself and other people so that this is a relevant vision and symbolic meanings of the social reality of other people. According to J. Mead, society and the social individual (the social "I") are constituted in the aggregate of processes of interindividual interactions. The theory of symbolic interactionism says that a symbol can mean any object, event or phenomenon and presupposes a certain person's reaction to it, which can be expressed in certain social actions corresponding to a given symbol. In addition, a symbol is a means by which a person can communicate and interact with others. Symbolic Interactionism at Sociology is based on the interpretation of human behavior, in which characters that carry meaningful information are "viewed".

The most important merit of J. Meade is the role theory of personality he developed , according to which the personality, its specificity and specific features are defined through the social roles that it performs, and the activity of the individual in this case is the totality of its social roles embodied in the language system of symbols and other symbolic Systems. Through the process of accepting social roles, the individual develops his self-the ability of a person to represent himself as the object of his thinking.

The human self in its development goes through two stages:

1) the stage of the game, when the child begins to play roles that are not his own (teacher, doctor, pilot);

2) the stage of competition, when, taking part in competitions, the child sees himself from the side, through the eyes of other children.

Any social group that gives an individual a sense of organization, Mead calls it: "generalized another." Each individual sees himself from the position of a "generalized other".

The follower and student of J. Mead, the American scientist Herbert Bloomer, developed the initial postulates of this theory. According to G. Blumer, symbolic interactionism is based on three basic postulates:

1) A person acts more on the basis of the values that he gives to objects, events and phenomena, rather than simply reacting to external natural and social stimuli;

2) Symbolic values are not so fixed, constant, formulated in advance, how they are created, developed and changed in interaction situations;

3) Symbolic values are the result of interpretations carried out in interaction contexts (interactions).

In his works, G. Bloomer examined in detail the collective behavior of people, based on common meanings, symbols, expectations shared by a social group. This, most often, the conscious behavior of individuals in the team, but there is also spontaneous group behavior, such as the action of the crowd, panic, etc. Such behavior can arise in circumstances of violation of accepted values, ordinary forms of existence. G. Blumer, along with spontaneous groups, also investigated the stable forms of social behavior- social movements, as well as revivalist movements and nationalist ones, with a clear structural organization and formed on the basis of generally accepted meanings.