In recent decades interactionism has grown in a number of new directions. Thus, interactionism no longer represented a distinctive oppositional perspective as it had previously. By the 1980s mainstream sociology had accepted much of the core of the symbolic interactionist approach, with its emphases on meaning, agency, and the interpretive analysis of interactional processes, as a legitimate and central part of the discipline. Interactionists stressed that sociologists could best understand social life’s core features by taking the role of the individuals or groups they were studying, particularly by engaging in participant observation. In challenging functionalism, the dominant sociological paradigm of the 1950s, interactionists urged their colleagues to examine how people “do social life”-that is, how they construct and negotiate meanings, order, and identities in their everyday interactions. Symbolic interactionism had its most significant impact on sociology between 19. Blumer’s book, Symbolic Interactionism (see Classic Works and Original Statements) serves as another foundational work for the perspective. The most influential contributor to the symbolic interactionist tradition was Herbert Blumer, who coined the perspective’s label in 1937. Along with Mead, two other important early sociologists who shaped the interactionist tradition were Charles Horton Cooley and William Isaac Thomas. One of his most famous books, Mind, Self, and Society (see Classic Works and Original Statements) is often taken as a charter for the symbolic interactionist approach. The most important bridge between the pragmatic tradition and sociology was George Herbert Mead. Symbolic interactionism grew out of the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism in the late 19th century, especially as elaborated by William James, John Dewey, and Charles S. In doing so it accentuates how symbols, interaction, and human agency serve as the cornerstones of social life. In contrast to functionalism and conflict theory, symbolic interactionism emphasizes the micro-processes through which people construct meanings, identities, and joint acts. Currently most undergraduate sociology textbooks highlight this perspective, along with functionalism and conflict theory, as one of the three distinctive models for understanding social life. While the history of symbolic interactionism stretches back through the 20th century, it emerged as a prominent theoretical perspective in American sociology during the 1960s.
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