Symbolic Interaction

Misyurov D.A. Dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas // Credo New. 2012. №2

by Dmitry Misyurov

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with... more The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

Narrative, Interpersonal Communication, and Social Construction

by Chaim Noy

Book chapter. In Israeli Backpackers and Their Society: A View from Afar. Noy, c. and Cohen, E. (Eds.), pp. 111-158. (2005).

A Visual Approach to Multiculturalism

by Jerome Krase

This is a draft of an article that appeared as “A Visual Approach to Multiculturalism,” in Beyond Multiculturalism edited by Giuliana Prato, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2009: 1-38.

There are undoubtedly many ways by which one can approach multiculturalism and its many intersections at the local,... more There are undoubtedly many ways by which one can approach multiculturalism and its many intersections at the local, national and global levels. Each different perspective on the subject adds another dimension to our understanding of this complex, and changing phenomena. Offered here is a visual approach to one of its more ubiquitous versions, ethnic diversity, as it is expressed in the appearance of vernacular landscapes. It is argued that there is something about ethnic vernacular landscapes that can be best grasped via the use of image-based research. It is also suggested that such an approach might provide some needed focus to the inter- and intra-disciplinary debates over cultural diversity in its many scientific and related ideological forms.

Social Semiotics and Fieldwork: Method and Analytics

by Phillip Vannini

Published in Qualitative Inquiry, 2007

Drawing from recent analytical developments in semiotics and postmodern
ethnography, this article exposes and... more Drawing from recent analytical developments in semiotics and postmodern
ethnography, this article exposes and assesses the combination of social
semiotics and fieldwork as a form of qualitative inquiry. Approaches to semiotics
and fieldwork are not new—structural ethnographers in cultural anthropology
and structural interactionists in sociology and communication studies
have previously laid the foundations for the integration of formal methods of
analysis and inductive approaches to data collection—yet, as this article
argues, structuralism’s limitations have hampered the growth of semiotics
within qualitative inquiry. By presenting social semiotics as a viable alternative
to structural semiotics, by describing in clear pedagogical fashion how
social semiotics can be used as a research strategy, and by exposing its potential
for applicability, this article attempts to bring sociosemiotic ethnography
to the forefront of contemporary qualitative inquiry.

Dead Poets’ Society: Teaching, Publish-or-Perish,

by Phillip Vannini

Published in Symbolic interaction, 2006

Within social psychology, the concept of authenticity of the self has traditionally
suffered from lack of... more Within social psychology, the concept of authenticity of the self has traditionally
suffered from lack of definitional clarity. In this article, after conceptualizing
authenticity as the phenomenological emotional experience
of feeling true to one’s self, the author empirically examines the diversity
of emotions associated with various degrees of authenticity and inauthenticity.
Data for this study are from semi-structured in-depth interviews
with forty-six faculty members employed at a public research
university in the United States. Professors’ experiences of and dispositions
toward teaching, and their experiences of authenticity and inauthenticity,
are examined against the background of structural and cultural
forces and changes in American higher education. Data interpretation
shows that teaching is mostly a source of authenticity for professors in the
humanities, and less for those professors who identify themselves primarily
as researchers.

Symbols of Power in Rituals of Violence: The Personality Cult and Iconoclasm on the Soviet Empire’s Periphery (East Germany, 1945–61)

by Alexey Tikhomirov

published in: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 13, Number 1, Winter 2012, pp. 47-88.

Who Do They Think They’re Talking To? Framings of the Audience by Social Media Users

by David Brake

International Journal of Communication, Vol 6 (2012) http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/932

This article examines the understandings and meanings of personal information sharing online using a predominantly... more This article examines the understandings and meanings of personal information sharing online using a predominantly symbolic interactionist analytic perspective and focusing on writers’ conceptions of their relationships with their audiences. It draws on an analysis of in-depth interviews with 23 personal bloggers. They were found to have limited interest in gathering information about their audiences, appearing to assume that readers are sympathetic. A comprehensive and grounded typology of imagined relationships with audiences was devised. Although their blogs were all public, some interviewees appeared to frame their blogging practice as primarily self-directed, with their potential audiences playing a marginal role. These factors provide one explanation for some forms of potentially risky self-exposure observed among social media users.

What symbols

by Dmitry Misyurov

This article contains 12 questions about the symbols. What are your thoughts in response? This article contains 12 questions about the symbols. What are your thoughts in response?

The Performative Body: Symbolic Interactionism, Dramaturgy, Affect, and the Sociology of the Body

by Phillip Vannini

Co-authored with Dennis Waskul, forthcoming in the Handbook of Dramaturgy, edited by Charles Edgley (Ashgate, 2013)

Fitting in and fighting back: Stigma management strategies among homeless kids

by Peter Kaufman

Sociology of the body, sociology of the senses, symbolic interactionism

by Phillip Vannini

First chapter of the book: The Senses in Self, Society, and Culture."

Power Struggles: Pain and Authenticity in SM Play

by Staci Newmahr

Despite a good deal of work on pain as a social/emotional construction, the assumption persists that pain is... more Despite a good deal of work on pain as a social/emotional construction, the assumption persists that pain is understood and experienced as inherently and originally negative. Postmodern and constructionist treatments of pain alike focus on negotiations and mediations of pain from that point forward. This article explores the ways in which members of an SM (sadomasochism) community frame, cast, and understand the role of pain in their SM activities, toward the ultimate achievement of authenticity in experiences of power-imbalanced social interaction. This analysis, based on an in-depth ethnographic study of an SM community, identifies four main discourses of pain, three of which conform to hegemonic understandings of pain as intrinsically negative experience. It reveals the complex strategies SM participants employ to make sense of pain and contrasts this with a minority discourse in the community in which the provision and experience of pain is framed as a desirable social, carnal, and emotional experience.

Material culture and symbolic interactionism

by Phillip Vannini

Published in the book Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life: Ethnographic Approaches

Culture is what people do together (cf. Becker 1986; Ingold 2000).  Such a focus on collective doing, making, and... more Culture is what people do together (cf. Becker 1986; Ingold 2000).  Such a focus on collective doing, making, and the materiality and consequentiality of action-based cultural processes is what sensitizing concepts like “material culture” and “technoculture” are meant to highlight.  Conceptualizing culture as action and interaction is intended to downplay the importance of cognitive cultural dimensions such as values, beliefs, codes, and ideas and to emphasize instead bodily engagements, techniques, skills, habits, and the materiality of the world of interaction.  The scope of this chapter is to survey the ontological foundations of such ideas and therefore of perspectives that view material culture and technoculture as interaction.  By taking some license in blurring boundaries amongst theoretical traditions, in what follows I review four basic principles of pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, performance theory, and social semiotics.  The chapter is divided into four parts.  Each part reviews one of the four principles that distinguish this pan-theoretical perspective: diffused agency, semiotic power, ecology, and emergence.

" Scissors, Please": The Practical Accomplishment of Surgical Work in the Operating Theater

by Jeff Bezemer

Jeff Bezemer, Ged Murtagh, Alexandra Cope, Gunther Kress and Roger Kneebone

The focus of this article is on professional activity in the operating theater. We explore how surgeons and nurses... more The focus of this article is on professional activity in the operating theater. We explore how surgeons and nurses organize their activities, how social interaction is used to help structure and define situations, and how differentials in knowledge are constructed and oriented to. We utilize some ideas and concepts from symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis to analyze small clips of audio- and video-recorded interaction. Focusing on how surgeons and nurses request, provide, and apply surgical instruments, the analysis shows how surgical work is accomplished through talk and bodily conduct. We conclude that, examined in detail, the social interaction between surgeons and nurses is analytically inseparable from the “technical” demands of their work.

As if nobody’s reading’: The imagined audience and socio-technical biases in personal blogging practice in the UK

by David Brake

Thesis

This thesis examines the understandings and meanings of personal blogging from the perspective of blog authors. The... more This thesis examines the understandings and meanings of personal blogging from the perspective of blog authors. The theoretical framework draws on a symbolic interactionist perspective, focusing on how meaning is constructed through blogging practices, supplemented by theories of mediation and critical technology studies. The principal evidence in this study is derived from an analysis of in-depth interviews with bloggers selected to maximise their diversity based on the results of an initial survey. This is supplemented by an analysis of personal blogging’s technical contexts and of various societal influences that appear to influence blogging practices.

Bloggers were found to have limited interest in gathering information about their readers, appearing to rely instead on an assumption that readers are sympathetic. Although personal blogging practices have been framed as being a form of radically free expression, they were also shown to be subject to potential biases including social norms and the technical characteristics of blogging services. Blogs provide a persistent record of a blogger’s practice, but the bloggers in this study did not generally read their archives or expect others to do so, nor did they retrospectively edit their archives to maintain a consistent self-presentation.

The empirical results provide a basis for developing a theoretical perspective to account for blogging practices. This emphasises firstly that a blogger’s construction of the meaning of their practice can be based as much on an imagined and desired social context as it is on an informed and reflexive understanding of the communicative situation. Secondly, blogging practices include a variety of envisaged audience relationships, and some blogging practices are essentially self-directed with potential audiences playing a marginal role. Blogging’s technical characteristics and the social norms surrounding blogging practices appear to enable and reinforce this unanticipated lack of engagement with audiences. This perspective contrasts with studies of computer mediated communication that suggest bloggers would monitor their audiences and present themselves strategically to ensure interactions are successful in their terms. The study also points the way towards several avenues for further research including a more in-depth consideration of the neglected structural factors (both social and technical) which potentially influence blogging practices, and an examination of social network site use practices using a similar analytical approach.

Art, Symbols and Computers

by Simone Gozzano

S. Levialdi e C.E. Bernardelli (Eds) Representation: Relationship Between Language and Image, World Scientific Press, Singapore 1994, pp. 85-90.

An Art-Machine is imagined An Art-Machine is imagined

A Symbolic Interactionist History of Sexuality?

by Chris Brickell

The Sociological Construction of Gender and Sexuality

by Chris Brickell

This essay considers how we might come to understand social constructionism sociologically. It examines a number of... more This essay considers how we might come to understand social constructionism sociologically. It examines a number of related approaches to gender and sexuality that speak to sociological concerns and might be termed social constructionist: historicism, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and materialist feminism. By recognising that social constructionism is multifarious rather than unified, we find that each social constructionist approach offers particular strengths for analysing the complexities of gender and sexuality. Through closely analysing these approaches and some of the criticisms of them we can reassert sociology’s specific contribution, and embrace social constructionist analyses which address the multilayered characteristics of the social in general and gender and sexuality in particular.

Confiance et émotions dans le métro de New York

by Stephane Tonnelat

Citation : Stéphane Tonnelat. forthcoming (2011) « Confiance et émotion dans le métro de New York » in Catherine Espinasse et Eloi le Mouël Lieux et liens : espaces, mobilités, urbanités, tome 2 : Des liens qui créent des lieux, L’Harmattan.

Goffman's Interaction Order at the Margins: Stigma, Role, and Normalization in the Outreach Encounter

by Robin James Smith

Smith, R.J. (2011) "Goffman's Interaction Order at the Margins: Stigma, Role, and Normalization in the Outreach Encounter", Symbolic Interaction [Special Issue: Interaction] 34 (3): 357-376

This article considers Goffman's conceptualization of interaction order at the margins of society in encounters... more This article considers Goffman's conceptualization of interaction order at the margins of society in encounters between urban welfare workers and their clients. Observations from these encounters demonstrate practices relating to the situated management of stigma and identity, and the accomplishment of role within these service encounters. A reading of Goffman's theoretical contribution lies in revealing how social actors and social structures are realized in situ within the constraints of the interaction order sui generis. The article discusses three aspects of the outreach encounter, namely, (1) the accomplishment of role and motive, (2) the sequential phases of the outreach encounter, and (3) "the normalization ritual," and introduces the concept of willful disattention.

Keywords: Goffman, homelessness, interaction order, normalization, outreach, role, stigma, willful disattention