Hi, Robert and other dear teachers. Nothing comes immediately to mind, although I haven't had my tea yet, but I think there may be a good reason for this. One of the fundamental tenets of symbolic interactionism is that everything is processual and, therefore, social change is perpetual. Social change might happen in the ways people define and construct their realities, as interactionists might study in deviance, culture, and or health and illness; it might happen in the ways that people seek to effect change on a grand scale, as interactionists do when they study social movements (Blumer actually had a wonderful essay on social movements); it might happen in the ways people's understandings of self change in different social conditions, as interactionists often do when they are doing social psych types of stuff; it might even happen in the ways that people influence the ways that institutions like governments operate, as Michael Schwalbe and other interactionists have tackled.
Another major reason it might be kinda hard to pinpoint the research could follow from Dave Maines' and Gary Fine's respective arguments that interactionism is actually the dominant paradigm in American sociology; the problem is no one seems able to recognize it since the name of the perspective has been ghettoized and assigned almost exclusively to the realm of the self. Maines explains--and cites--the argument a lot better than I'm capable of before my tea, so if anyone is interested in it, check out the introductory chapter to his (2000, Aldine de Gruyter) The Faultline of Consciousness: A View of Interactionism in Sociology. It's a wonderfully curmudgeonly book and a lot of fun to read. It's also kinda nice to see an interactionist taking on structure...
As always, A.
Department of Sociology
Willamette University
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From: "Robert Greene" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: TEACHSOC: social change and SI
Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 11:14:44 -0600
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>Hi, Is there any research that examines the relationship between social change and symbolic interactionism? Thanks!
