Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis, that analyzes class relations and societal conflict using

a materialist interpretation of historical development and a dialectical view of social transformation. It originates from
the mid-to-late 19th century works of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Marxist methodology originally used a method of economic and sociopolitical inquiry known as historical
materialism to analyze and critique the development of capitalism and the role of class struggle in systemic
economic change. According to Marxist perspective, class conflict within capitalism arises due to intensifying
contradictions between the highly productive mechanized and socialized production performed by the proletariat,
and the private ownership and appropriation of the surplus product (profit) by a small minority of private owners
called the bourgeoisie. As the contradiction becomes apparent to the proletariat through the alienation of labor,
social unrest between the two antagonistic classes will intensify, until it culminates in social revolution. The eventual
long-term outcome of this revolution would be the establishment of socialism – a socioeconomic system based
on social ownership of the means of production, distribution based on one's contribution, and production organized
directly for use. As the productive forces and technology continued to advance, Marx hypothesized that socialism
would eventually give way to a communist stage of social development, which would be a classless, stateless,
humane society erected on common ownership and the principle of "From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs".

Marxism has since developed into different branches and schools of thought, and there is now no single definitive
Marxist theory. ]Different Marxian schools place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while
de-emphasizing or rejecting other aspects, and sometimes combine Marxist analysis with non-Marxian concepts; as
a result, they might reach contradictory conclusions from one another.[2]

Marxist analyses and methodologies have influenced multiple political ideologies and social movements,
and Marxist understandings of history and society have been adopted by some academics in the disciplines
of archaeology, anthropology,[3] media studies,[4]political science, theater, history, sociology, art history and
theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology,
and philosophy.

Social classes
The identity of a social class derives from its relationship to the means of production; Marx describes the social
classes in capitalist societies:

 Proletariat: "the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced
to selling their labour power in order to live".[20] As Andrei Platonov expressed "The working class is my home
country and my future is linked with the proletariat."[21] The capitalist mode of production establishes the
conditions enabling the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat because the workers' labour generates a surplus
value greater than the workers' wages.
 Bourgeoisie: those who "own the means of production" and buy labour power from the proletariat, thus
exploiting the proletariat; they subdivide as bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie.
 Petit bourgeoisie are those who work and can afford to buy little labour power i.e. small business owners,
peasant landlords, trade workers et al. Marxism predicts that the continual reinvention of the means of
production eventually would destroy the petit bourgeoisie, degrading them from the middle class to the
proletariat.
 Lumpenproletariat: The outcasts of society such as criminals, vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, et al., who have
no stake in the economy and no mind of their own and so are decoyed by every bidder.
 Landlords: a historically important social class who retain some wealth and power.
 Peasantry and farmers: a scattered class incapable of organizing and effecting socio-economic change, most of
whom would enter the proletariat, and some become landlords.

Class consciousness denotes the awareness – of itself and the social world – that a social class possesses, and its
capacity to rationally act in their best interests; hence, class consciousness is required before they can effect a
successful revolution.

Without defining ideology,[22] Marx used the term to denote the production of images of social reality; according to
Engels, "ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false
consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an
ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces".[23] Because the ruling class controls the
society's means of production, the superstructure of society (the ruling social ideas), are determined by the best
interests of the ruling class. In The German Ideology, "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling
ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force".[24]

The term "political economy" originally denoted the study of the conditions under which economic production was
organised in the capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy is the study of the means of production, specifically
of capital, and how that manifests as economic activity.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels[edit]

Main articles: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political economist, and socialist
revolutionary, who addressed the matters of alienation and exploitation of the working class, the capitalist mode of
production, and historical materialism. He is famous for analyzing history in terms of class struggle, summarized in
the initial line introducing the Communist Manifesto (1848): "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles".

Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German political philosopher and Karl Marx's co-
developer of communist theory. Marx and Engels met in September 1844; discovering that they shared like views of
philosophy and socialism, they collaborated and wrote works such as Die heilige Familie (The Holy Family). After
Marx was deported from France in January 1845, Engels and Marx moved to Belgium, which then permitted
greater freedom of expression than other European countries; in January 1846, they returned to Brussels to
establish the Communist Correspondence Committee.

In 1847, they began writing The Communist Manifesto (1848), based on Engels' The Principles of Communism; six
weeks later, they published the 12,000-word pamphlet in February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled them, and they
moved to Cologne, where they published the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a politically radical newspaper. Again, by
1849, they had to leave Cologne for London. The Prussian authorities pressured the British government to expel
Marx and Engels, but Prime Minister Lord John Russell refused.

After Karl Marx's death in 1883, Friedrich Engels became the editor and translator of Marx's writings. With
his Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) – analysing monogamous marriage as
guaranteeing male social domination of women, a concept analogous, in communist theory, to the capitalist class's
economic domination of the working class – Engels made intellectually significant contributions to feminist
theory and Marxist feminism.

M ore than a century after his death, KARL MARX remains one of the most controversial

figures in the Western world. His relentless criticism of CAPITALISM and his corresponding
promise of an inevitable, harmonious socialist future inspired a revolution of global proportions.
It seemed that—with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the spread
of COMMUNISM throughout Eastern Europe—the Marxist dream had firmly taken root during the
first half of the twentieth century.

That dream collapsed before the century had ended. The people of Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, and the USSR rejected
Marxist ideology and entered a remarkable transition toward private PROPERTY RIGHTS and the
market-exchange system, one that is still occurring. Which aspects of Marxism created such a
powerful revolutionary force? And what explains its eventual demise? The answers lie in some
general characteristics of Marxism—its economics, social theory, and overall vision.

Labor Theory of Value

The labor theory of value is a major pillar of traditional Marxian economics, which is evident in
Marx’s masterpiece, Capital (1867). The theory’s basic claim is simple: the value of a
commodity can be objectively measured by the average number of labor hours required to
produce that commodity.

If a pair of shoes usually takes twice as long to produce as a pair of pants, for example, then
shoes are twice as valuable as pants. In the long run, the competitive price of shoes will be twice
the price of pants, regardless of the value of the physical inputs.

Although the labor theory of value is demonstrably false, it prevailed among classical economists
through the mid nineteenth century. ADAM SMITH, for instance, flirted with a labor theory of
value in his classic defense of capitalism, The Wealth of Nations (1776), and DAVID
RICARDO later systematized it in his Principles of Political Economy(1817), a text studied by
generations of free-market economists.

So the labor theory of value was not unique to Marxism. Marx did attempt, however, to turn the
theory against the champions of capitalism, pushing the theory in a direction that most classical
economists hesitated to follow. Marx argued that the theory could explain the value of all
commodities, including the commodity that workers sell to capitalists for a wage. Marx called
this commodity “labor power.”
Labor power is the worker’s capacity to produce goods and services. Marx, using principles of
classical economics, explained that the value of labor power must depend on the number of
labor hours it takes society, on average, to feed, clothe, and shelter a worker so that he or she
has the capacity to work. In other words, the long-run wage workers receive will depend on the
number of labor hours it takes to produce a person who is fit for work. Suppose five hours of
labor are needed to feed, clothe, and protect a worker each day so that the worker is fit for work
the following morning. If one labor hour equaled one dollar, the correct wage would be five
dollars per day.

Marx then asked an apparently devastating question: if all goods and services in a capitalist
society tend to be sold at prices (and wages) that reflect their true value (measured by labor
hours), how can it be that capitalists enjoy PROFITS—even if only in the short run? How do
capitalists manage to squeeze out a residual between total revenue and total costs?

Capitalists, Marx answered, must enjoy a privileged and powerful position as owners of the
means of production and are therefore able to ruthlessly exploit workers. Although the capitalist
pays workers the correct wage, somehow—Marx was terribly vague here—the capitalist makes
workers work more hours than are needed to create the worker’s labor power. If the capitalist
pays each worker five dollars per day, he can require workers to work, say, twelve hours per
day—a not uncommon workday during Marx’s time. Hence, if one labor hour equals one dollar,
workers produce twelve dollars’ worth of products for the capitalist but are paid only five. The
bottom line: capitalists extract “surplus value” from the workers and enjoy monetary profits.

Although Marx tried to use the labor theory of value against capitalism by stretching it to its
limits, he unintentionally demonstrated the weakness of the theory’s logic and underlying
assumptions. Marx was correct when he claimed that classical economists failed to adequately
explain capitalist profits. But Marx failed as well. By the late nineteenth century, the economics
profession rejected the labor theory of value. Mainstream economists now believe that capitalists
do not earn profits by exploiting workers (seePROFITS). Instead, they believe, entrepreneurial
capitalists earn profits by forgoing current consumption, by taking risks, and by organizing
production.

Alienation
There is more to Marxism, however, than the labor theory of value and Marx’s criticism of profit
seeking. Marx wove economics and philosophy together to construct a grand theory of human
history and social change. His concept of alienation, for example, first articulated in his Economic
and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, plays a key role in his criticism of capitalism.
Marx believed that people, by nature, are free, creative beings who have the potential to totally
transform the world. But he observed that the modern, technologically developed world is
apparently beyond our full control. Marx condemned the FREE MARKET, for instance, as being
“anarchic,” or ungoverned. He maintained that the way the market economy is coordinated—
through the spontaneous purchase and sale of private property dictated by the laws
of SUPPLY and DEMAND—blocks our ability to take control of our individual and collective
destinies.

Marx condemned capitalism as a system that alienates the masses. His reasoning was as
follows: although workers produce things for the market, market forces, not workers, control
things. People are required to work for capitalists who have full control over the means of
production and maintain power in the workplace. Work, he said, becomes degrading,
monotonous, and suitable for machines rather than for free, creative people. In the end, people
themselves become objects—robotlike mechanisms that have lost touch with human nature, that
make decisions based on cold profit-and-loss considerations, with little concern for human worth
and need. Marx concluded that capitalism blocks our capacity to create our own humane society.

Marx’s notion of alienation rests on a crucial but shaky assumption. It assumes that people can
successfully abolish an advanced, market-based society and replace it with a democratic,
comprehensively planned society. Marx claimed that we are alienated not only because many of
us toil in tedious, perhaps even degrading, jobs, or because by competing in the marketplace we
tend to place profitability above human need. The issue is not about toil versus happiness. We
are alienated, he maintained, because we have not yet designed a society that is fully planned
andcontrolled, a society without COMPETITION, profits and losses, money, private property, and
so on—a society that, Marx predicted, must inevitably appear as the world advances through
history.

Here is the greatest problem with Marx’s theory of alienation: even with the latest developments
in computer technology, we cannot create a comprehensively planned system that puts an end
to scarcity and uncertainty. But for Marxists to speak of alienation under capitalism, they
must assume that a successfully planned world is possible. That is, Marx believed that under
capitalism we are “alienated” or “separated” from our potential to creatively plan and control our
collective fate. But if comprehensive socialist planning fails to work in practice—if, indeed, it is
an impossibility, as we have learned from MISES and Hayek—then we cannot be “alienated” in
Marx’s use of the term. We cannot really be “separated” from our “potential” to comprehensively
plan the economy if comprehensive planning is impossible.
Scientific Socialism
A staunch anti-utopian, Marx claimed that his criticism of capitalism was based on the latest
developments in science. He called his theory “scientific socialism” to clearly distinguish his
approach from that of other socialists (Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, for instance),
who seemed more content to dream about some future ideal society without comprehending
how existing society really worked (seeSOCIALISM).

Marx’s scientific socialism combined his economics and philosophy—including his theory of value
and the concept of alienation—to demonstrate that throughout the course of human history, a
profound struggle has developed between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Specifically, Marx
claimed that capitalism has ruptured into a war between two classes: the bourgeoisie (the
capitalist class that owns the means of production) and the proletariat (the working class, which
is at the mercy of the capitalists). Marx claimed that he had discovered the laws of history, laws
that expose the contradictions of capitalism and the necessity of the class struggle.

Marx predicted that competition among capitalists would grow so fierce that, eventually, most
capitalists would go bankrupt, leaving only a handful of monopolists controlling nearly all
production. This, to Marx, was one of the contradictions of capitalism: competition, instead of
creating better products at lower prices for consumers, in the long run creates MONOPOLY, which
exploits workers and consumers alike. What happens to the former capitalists? They fall into the
ranks of the proletariat, creating a greater supply of labor, a fall in wages, and what Marx called
a growing reserve army of the unemployed. Also, thought Marx, the anarchic, unplanned nature
of a complex market economy is prone to economic crises as supplies and demands become
mismatched, causing huge swings in business activity and, ultimately, severe economic
depressions.

The more advanced the capitalist economy becomes, Marx argued, the greater these
contradictions and conflicts. The more capitalism creates wealth, the more it sows the seeds of
its own destruction. Ultimately, the proletariat will realize that it has the collective power to
overthrow the few remaining capitalists and, with them, the whole system.

The entire capitalist system—with its private property, money, market exchange, profit-and-loss
accounting, labor markets, and so on—must be abolished, thought Marx, and replaced with a
fully planned, self-managed economic system that brings a complete and utter end to
exploitation and alienation. A socialist revolution, argued Marx, is inevitable.

An Appraisal
Marx was surely a profound thinker who won legions of supporters around the world. But his
predictions have not withstood the test of time. Although capitalist markets have changed over
the past 150 years, competition has not devolved into monopoly. Real wages have risen and
profit rates have not declined. Nor has a reserve army of the unemployed developed. We do
have bouts with the business cycle, but more and more economists believe that significant
recessions and depressions may be more the unintended result of state intervention
(through MONETARY POLICY carried out by central banks and government policies
on TAXATION and spending) than an inherent feature of markets as such.

Socialist revolutions, to be sure, have occurred throughout the world, but never where Marx’s
theory had predicted—in the most advanced capitalist countries. On the contrary, socialism was
forced on poor, so-called Third World countries. And those revolutions unwittingly condemned
the masses to systemic poverty and political dictatorship. In practice, socialism absolutely failed
to create the nonalienated, self-managed, and fully planned society. It failed to emancipate the
masses and instead crushed them with statism, domination, and the terrifying abuse of state
power.

Nations that have allowed for private property rights and full-blown market exchange, in
contrast to those “democratic socialist republics” of the twentieth century, have enjoyed
remarkable levels of long-term ECONOMIC GROWTH. Free-market economies lift the masses from
poverty and create the necessary institutional conditions for overall political freedom.

Marx just didn’t get it. Nor did his followers. Marx’s theory of value, his philosophy of human
nature, and his claims to have uncovered the laws of history fit together to offer a complex and
grand vision of a new world order. If the first three-quarters of the twentieth century provided a
testing ground for that vision, the end of the century demonstrates its truly utopian nature and
ultimate unworkability.

In the wake of communism’s collapse, traditional Marxism, which so many mainstream

economists criticized relentlessly for decades, is now seriously questioned by a growing number
of disillusioned radicals and former Marxists. Today there is a vibrant post-Marxism, associated
with the efforts of those active in the scholarly journal Rethinking Marxism, for instance. Rather
than trying to solve esoteric puzzles about the labor theory of value or offering new theoretical
models of a planned economy, many of today’s sharpest post-Marxists appreciate marginal
analysis and the knowledge and incentive problems of collective action. In this new
literature,FRIEDRICH HAYEK seems to be getting a more positive reception than Marx himself.
Exactly what will come out of these developments is hard to predict, but it is unlikely to look like
the Marxism of the past.
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective which developed around the middle of the twentieth century
and that continues to be influential in some areas of the discipline. It is particularly important
in microsociology and social psychology. Symbolic interactionism is derived from the American philosophy
of pragmatism and particularly from the work of George Herbert Mead.

Herbert Blumer, a student and interpreter of Mead, coined the term "symbolic interactionism" and put forward an
influential summary of the perspective: people act toward things based on the meaning those things have for them,
and these meanings are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation.[1]

Sociologists working in this tradition have researched a wide range of topics using a variety of research methods.
However, the majority of interactionist research uses qualitative research techniques, like participant observation, to
study aspects of (1) social interaction and/or (2) individuals' selves.

History[edit]

Symbolic interaction was invented by George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley. Mead argued that people's
selves are social products, but that these selves are also purposive and creative,[citation needed] and believed that the true
test of any theory was that it was "useful in solving complex social problems" (Griffin 59). Mead's influence on
symbolic interactionism was said to be so powerful that other sociologists regard him as the one "true founder" of
the symbolic interactionism tradition. Although Mead taught in a philosophy department, he is best known by
sociologists as the teacher who trained a generation of the best minds in their field. Strangely, he never set forth his
wide-ranging ideas in a book or systematic treatise. After his death in 1931, his students pulled together class notes
and conversations with their mentor and published Mind, Self and Society in his name. (Griffin 59). 'It is a common
misconception that John Dewey was the leader of this sociological theory; however, according to The Handbook of
Symbolic Interactionism,Mead was undoubtedly the individual who "transformed the inner structure of the theory,
moving it to a higher level of theoretical complexity" (Herman-Kinney Reynolds 67).[2]

Herbert Blumer was a social constructionist, and was influenced by Dewey; as such, this theory is very
phenomenologically based. He believed that the "Most human and humanizing activity that people engage in is
talking to each other" (Griffin 60).[3] Two other theorists who have influenced Symbolic interaction theory are Yrjö
Engeström and David Middleton. Engeström and Middleton explained the usefulness of symbolic interactionism in
the communication field in a variety of work settings, including "courts of law, health care, computer software design,
scientific laboratory, telephone sales, control, repair, and maintenance of advance manufacturing systems."[4] Other
scholars credited for their contribution to the theory are Thomas, Park, James, Horton, Cooley, Znaniecki, Baldwin,
Redfield, and Wirth.[5]

Basic premises and approach[edit]

The term "symbolic interactionism" has came into use as a label for a relatively distinctive approach to the study of
human life and human conduct (Blumer, 1969). This viewpoint sees people as active in shaping their world, rather
than as entities who are acted upon by society (Herman and Reynolds, 1994). With symbolic interactionism, reality
is seen as social, developed interaction with others. Most symbolic interactionists believe a physical reality does
indeed exist by an individual's social definitions, and that social definitions do develop in part or relation to
something "real". People thus do not respond to this reality directly, but rather to the social understanding of reality;
i.e., they respond to this reality indirectly through a kind of filter which consists of individuals' different perspectives.
This means that humans exist not in the physical space composed of realities, but in the "world" composed only of
"objects". According to Blumer, the "objects" can be divided into three types: physical objects, social objects, and
abstract objects.

Both individuals and society cannot be separated far from each other for two reasons. One, being that they are both
created through social interaction, and two, one cannot be understood in terms without the other. Behavior is not
defined by forces from the environment or inner forces such as drives, or instincts, but rather by a reflective, socially
understood meaning of both the internal and external incentives that are currently presented (Meltzer et al., 1975).[6]

Herbert Blumer (1969) set out three basic premises of the perspective:

 "Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things."
 "The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others and
the society."
 "These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing
with the things he/she encounters."

The first premise includes everything that a human being may note in their world, including physical objects, actions
and concepts. Essentially, individuals behave towards objects and others based on the personal meanings that the
individual has already given these items. The second premise explains the meaning of such things is derived from,
or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with other humans. Blumer, following Mead, claimed people
interact with each other by interpreting or defining each other's actions instead of merely reacting to each other's
actions. Their "response" is not made directly to the actions of one another but instead is based on the meaning
which they attach to such actions. Thus, human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols and signification,
by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another's actions (Blumer 1962). Meaning is either taken for
granted and pushed aside as an unimportant element which need not to be investigated or it is regarded as a mere
neutral link or one of the causal chains between the causes or factors responsible for human behavior and this
behavior as the product of such factors. (Blumer 1969). Social interaction is the source of meaning, and out of which
the typical communication media which have meanings, i.e., the language arises, and is negotiated through the use
of it. We have the ability to name things and designate objects or actions to a certain idea or phenomenon. The use
of symbols is a popular procedure for interpretation and intelligent expression. Blumer contrasted this process
with behaviorist explanations of human behavior, which does not allow for interpretation between stimulus and
response.

In Blumer's third premise the idea of minding comes into play. Symbolic interactionists describe thinking as an inner
conversation. (Griffin 62). Mead called this inner dialogue minding. Minding is the delay in one's thought process
that happens when one thinks about what they will do next. The third premise is that these meanings are handled in,
and modified through, an interpretative process[7] used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters. We
naturally talk to ourselves in order to sort out the meaning of a difficult situation. But first, we need language. Before
we can think, we must be able to interact symbolically. (Griffin 62). The emphasis on symbols, negotiated meaning,
and social construction of society brought on attention to the roles people play. Role-taking is a key mechanism that
permits people to see another person's perspective to understand what an action might mean to another person.
Role-taking is a part of our lives at an early age. Playing house and pretending to be someone else are examples of
this phenomena. There is an improvisational quality of roles; however, actors often take on a script that they follow.
Because of the uncertainty of roles in social contexts, the burden of role-making is on the person in the situation. In
this sense, we are proactive participants in our environment.[8]

Mind, Self and Society[edit]

Mind, Self and Society is the book published by Mead's students based on his lectures and teaching. The title of the
book serves as the key concepts of symbolic interaction theory. The mind refers to an individual's ability to use
symbols to create meanings for the world around him. Individuals use language and thought to accomplish this goal.
Self refers to an individual's ability to reflect on the way that he/she is perceived by others. Finally, society,
according to Mead is where all of these interactions are taking place.

The "I" and the "me"[edit]

While establishing the idea of self, Mead introduces a distinction between the "I" and the "me", respectively, the
active and socialized aspects of the person. The "me" is a similar concept to Cooley's looking-glass self. An
example of these concepts is the pygmalion effect whereby a person (I) behaves to match the sense of self (me)
they derive from others, in a form of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Research and methods[edit]

Sociologists working in this tradition have researched a wide range of topics using a variety of research methods.
However, the majority of interactionist research uses qualitative research methods, like participant observation, to
study aspects of 1) social interaction, and/or 2) individuals' selves. Participant observation allows researchers to
access symbols and meanings, as in Howard S. Becker's Art Worlds (1982) and Arlie Hochschild's The Managed
Heart (1983).[9] They argue that close contact and immersion in the everyday activities of the participants is
necessary for understanding the meaning of actions, defining situations and the process that actors construct the
situation through their interaction. Because of this close contact, interactions cannot remain completely liberated of
value commitments. In most cases, they make use of their values in choosing what to study; however, they seek to
be objective in how they conduct the research. Therefore, the symbolic-interaction approach is a micro-level
orientation focusing in close up human interaction in specific situations.

Sociological subfields that have been particularly influenced by symbolic interactionism include the sociology of
emotions, deviance/criminology, collective behavior/social movements, and the sociology of sex. Interactionist
concepts that have gained widespread usage include definition of the situation, emotion work, impression
management, looking glass self, and total institution. Semiology is connected to this discipline, but unlike those
elements of semiology which are about the structures of language, interactionists typically are more interested in the
ways in which meaning is fluid and ambiguous.[9]

Ethnomethodology, an offshoot of symbolic interactionism, questions how people's interactions can create the
illusion of a shared social order despite not understanding each other fully and having differing perspectives. Harold
Garfinkel demonstrated this by having his students perform "experiments in trust", called breaching experiments,
where they would interrupt ordinary conversations because they refused to take for granted that they knew what the
other person was saying. They would demand explanations and then explanations of the explanations (Garfinkel
1967) to gain understanding of each other's definitions and perspectives. Further and more recent
ethnomethodologist research has performed detailed analyses of basic conversations to reveal the methods of
how turn-taking and alternative conversational maneuvers are managed.[8]
Five central ideas behind symbolic interactionism[edit]

There are five central ideas to symbolic interactionism according to Joel M. Charon, author of Symbolic
Interactionism An Introduction, An Interpretation, An Integration:

1. "The human being must be understood as a social person. It is the constant search for social interaction that
leads us to do what we do. Instead of focusing on the individual and his or her personality, or on how the
society or social situation causes human behavior, symbolic interactionism focuses on the activities that
take place between actors. Interaction is the basic unit of study. Individuals are created through interaction;
society too is created through social interaction. What we do depends on interaction with others earlier in
our lifetimes, and it depends on our interaction right now. Social interaction is central to what we do. If we
want to understand cause, focus on social interaction.
2. The human being must be understood as a thinking being. Human action is not only interaction among
individuals but also interaction within the individual. It is not our ideas or attitudes or values that are as
important as the constant active ongoing process of thinking. We are not simply conditioned, we are not
simply beings who are influenced by those around us, we are not simply products of society. We are, to our
very core, thinking animals, always conversing with ourselves as we interact with others. If we want to
understand cause, focus on human thinking.
3. Humans do not sense their environment directly, instead, humans define the situation they are in. An
environment may actually exist, but it is our definition of it that is important. Definition does not simply
randomly happen; instead, it results from ongoing social interaction and thinking.
4. The cause of human action is the result of what is occurring in our present situation. Cause unfolds in the
present social interaction, present thinking, and present definition. It is not society’s encounters with us in
our past, that causes action nor is it our own past experience that does. It is, instead, social interaction,
thinking, definition of the situation that takes place in the present. Our past enters into our actions primarily
because we think about it and apply it to the definition of the present situation.
5. Human beings are described as active beings in relation to their environment. Words such as conditioning,
responding, controlled, imprisoned, and formed are not used to describe the human being in symbolic
interaction. In contrast to other social-scientific perspectives humans are not thought of as being passive in
relation to their surroundings, but actively involved in what they do."[10]

Central interactionist themes[edit]

To Herbert Blumer’s conceptual perspective, he put them in three core principles: that people act toward things,
including each other, on the basis of the meanings they have for them; that these meanings are derived through
social interaction with others; and that these meanings are managed and transformed through an interpretive
process that people use to make sense of and handle the objects that constitute their social worlds. Keeping in mind
of Blumer’s earlier work, David A. Snow, professor of Sociology at the University of California, suggests four broader
and even more basic orienting principles: human agency, interactive determination, symbolization, and emergence.
Snow uses these four principles as the thematic bases for identifying and discussing contributions to the study of
social movements.

Human agency
Human agency emphasizes the active, willful, goal seeking character of human actors. The emphasis on agency
focuses attention on those actions, events, and moments in social life in which agentic action is especially palpable.

Interactive determination

Interactive determination specifies that understanding of focal objects of analysis, whether they are self-concepts,
identities, roles, practices, or even social movements. Basically this means, neither individual, society, self, or others
exist only in relation to each other and therefore can be fully understood only in terms of their interaction.

Symbolization

Symbolization highlights the processes through which events and conditions, artifacts, people, and other
environmental features that take on particular meanings, becoming nearly only objects of orientation. Human
behavior is partly contingent on what the object of orientation symbolizes or means.

Emergence

Emergence focuses on attention on the processual and nonhabituated side of social life, focusing not only on
organization and texture of social life, but also associated meaning and feelings. The principal of emergence tells us
not only to possibility of new forms of social life and system meaning but also to transformations in existing forms of
social organization. (Herman-Kinney Reynolds 812-824).[2]

New media[edit]

New Media is a term used to define all that is related to the internet and the interplay between technology, images
and sound.[11] As studies of online community proliferate, the concept of online community has become a more
accepted social construct. Studies encompassed discursive communities;[12][13] identity;[14][15] community as social
reality;[16]networking;[17] the public sphere;[18] ease and anonymity in interactions.[19] These studies show that online
community is an important social construct in terms of its cultural, structural, political and economic character.

It has been demonstrated that people's ideas about community are formed, in part, through interactions both in
online forums as well as those in face to face interactions. As a result, people act in their communities according to
the meanings they derive about their environment, whether online or offline, from those interactions. This
perspective reveals that online communication may very well take on different meanings for different people
depending on information, circumstance, relationships, power, and other systems that make up communities of
practice. People enact community the way it is conceived and the meaning of community evolves as they come up
with new ways to utilize it. Given this reality, scholars are continually challenged to research and understand how
online communities are comprised, how they function, and how they are connected to offline social life.[20]

Symbolic interaction theory was discussed in “The Cyberself: The Self-ing Project goes online, Symbolic Interaction
in the Digital Age.” Robinson discusses how symbolic interaction theory explains the way individuals create a sense
of self through their interactions with others. However, she believes advances in technology have changed this. The
article investigates the manner in which individuals form their online identity. She uses symbolic interaction theory to
examine the formation of the cyber “I” and a digital “generalized other.” In the article, Robinson suggests individuals
form new identities on the internet. She argues these cyber identities are not necessarily the way the individual
would be perceived offline.[21]
Criticisms[edit]

Symbolic interactionists are often criticized for being overly impressionistic in their research methods and somewhat
unsystematic in their theories. It is argued that the theory is not one theory, but rather, the framework for many
different theories. Additionally, some theorists have a problem with symbolic interaction theory due to its lack of
testability. These objections, combined with the fairly narrow focus of interactionist research on small-group
interactions and other social psychological issues, have relegated the interactionist camp to a minority position
among sociologists (albeit a fairly substantial minority). Much of this criticism arose during the 1970s in
the U.S. when quantitative approaches to sociology were dominant. Perhaps the best known of these is by Alvin
Gouldner.[22]

Framework and theories[edit]

Some critiques of symbolic interactionism are based on the assumption that it is a theory, and the critiques apply the
criteria for a "good" theory to something that does not claim to be a theory. Some critics find the symbolic
interactionist framework too broad and general when they are seeking specific theories. Symbolic interactionism is a
theoreticalframework rather than a theory (see Stryker and Vryan, 2003, for a clear distinction between the two as it
pertains to symbolic interactionism).[23] Thus, specific theories, hypotheses, and conceptualizations must be (and
have successfully been) derived from the general framework that symbolic interactionism provides before
interactionist theories can be assessed on the basis of the criteria a good theory (e.g.,
containing falsifiable hypotheses), or interactionist-inspired conceptualizations can be assessed on the basis of
effective conceptualizations. The theoretical framework, as with any theoretical framework, is vague when it comes
to analyzing empirical data or predicting outcomes in social life. As a framework rather than a theory, many scholars
find it difficult to use. Interactionism being a framework rather than a theory makes it impossible to test
interactionism in the manner that a specific theoretical claim about the relationship between specific variables in a
given context allows. Unlike the symbolic interactionist framework, the many theories derived from symbolic
interactionism, such as role theory and the versions of Identity Theory developed by Stryker,[24][25] and Burke and
colleagues,[26][27] clearly define concepts and the relationships between them in a given context, thus allowing for the
opportunity to develop and test hypotheses. Further, especially among Blumerian processual interactionists, a great
number of very useful conceptualizations have been developed and applied in a very wide range of social contexts,
types of populations, types of behaviors, and cultures and subcultures.

Social structure[edit]
Symbolic interactionism is often related and connected with social structure. This concept suggests that symbolic
interactionism is a construction of people’s social reality.[24] It also implies that from a realistic point of view, the
interpretations that are being made will not make much difference. When the reality of a situation is defined, the
situation becomes a meaningful reality. There are many aspects and factors that go into this theory. This includes
methodological criticisms, and critical sociological issues. A number of symbolic interactionists have addressed
these topics, the best known being Sheldon Stryker's structural symbolic interactionism[24][28] and the formulations of
interactionism heavily influenced by this approach (sometimes referred to as the "Indiana School" of symbolic
interactionism), including the works of key scholars in sociology and psychology using different methods and
theories applying a structural version of interactionism that are represented in a 2003 collection edited by Burke et
al.[29] Another well-known structural variation of symbolic interactionism that applies quantitative methods is Manford
H. Kuhn's (Kuhn and McPartland, 1954) formulation which is often referred to in sociological literature as the "Iowa
School." Negotiated Order Theory" also applies a structural approach.[30]

Language is the source of all meaning.[8] Social constructionist Herbert Blumer illuminates several key features
about Social Interactionism. Most people interpret things based on assignment and purpose. The interaction occurs
once the meaning of something has become identified. This concept of meaning is what starts to construct the
framework of social reality. By aligning social reality, Blumer suggests that language is the meaning of interaction.
Communication, especially in the form of symbolic interactionism is connected with language. Language initiates all
forms of communication, verbal and non-verbal. Blumer defines this source of meaning as a connection that arises
out of the social interaction that people have with each other.

There are many ways that Social Interactionism is connected with critical perspective. This relates to the overall
social structure because they both have similar points of convergence and synergism. According to social theorist
Patricia Burbank, these concepts of synergistic and diverging properties are what shape the viewpoints of humans
as social beings. These two concepts are different in a sense because of their views of human freedom and their
level of focus.

According to Burbank, actions are based on the effects of situations that occur during the process of Social
Interaction. Another important factor in meaningful situations is the environment in which the social interaction
occurs. The environment influences interaction, which leads to a reference group, which connects with perspective,
and then concludes to a definition of the situation. This illustrates the proper steps to define a situation. An approval
of the action occurs once the situation is defined. An interpretation is then made upon that action, which may
ultimately influence the perspective, action, and definition.

Sheldon Stryker, a social constructionist has had an incredible amount of influence on the field of Social
Interactionism. Stryker emphasizes that the sociology world at large is the most viable and vibrant intellectual
framework because of the concept of the wider community people live in is made possible because of
communication, which fuels symbolic interactionism.[24] Symbolic interactionism revitalizes society by illuminating our
thoughts, actions and gestures as well. By being made up of our thoughts self-belief, the Social Interactionism
Theory is the purpose of all human interaction, and is what causes society to exist. This fuels criticisms of the
symbolic interactionist framework for failing to account for social structure, as well as criticisms that interactionist
theories cannot be assessed via quantitative methods, and cannot be falsifiable or tested empirically. Framework is
important for the symbolic interaction theory because for in order for the social structure to form, there are certain
bonds of communication that need to be established to create the interaction The published literature indicates that
structural and processual variations of interactionism are both alive and well in sociology, as is the Blumerian
tradition of interactionism, and interactionism has been used more explicitly and more frequently
in psychology and anthropology as well. Much of the symbolic interactionist framework's basic tenets can be found
in a very wide range of sociological and psychological work, without being explicitly cited as interactionist, making
the influence of symbolic interactionism difficult to recognize given this general acceptance of its assumptions as
"common knowledge." Many scholars do not know they are applying interactionist ideas in their
owntheoretical assumptions and formulations.