Abstract
Essays in Interactionist Sociology is an organized tour of a selection of prominent contributions to the symbolic interactionist perspective. Our tour guide, Harvey A. Farberman (with assistance from Thomas J. Morrione in Chapters 4 and 5 and Eugene A. Weinstein in Chapter 11) provides tour participants (the reading audience) with a backward-walking narrative of where interactionism has been but also offers an occasional forward-looking glance of where it just might need to be heading.
The tour will be well understood and appreciated by those who have contributed to the life of the interactionist perspective in the past, those who are contributing to the life of the interactionist perspective in the present, and the rising young scholars within the perspective that are contemplating their future contributions to the field. However, as a public tour, it is also accessible to any and all who are interested in perusing a collection of selected works by a figure central to the growth of the contemporary perspective. To that end, this scripted, crafted, and intentionally organized tour might actually be most instructive for those who are “just visiting” or who are not yet active contributors to the interactionist perspective. The tour consists of fourteen chapters, twelve of which have been previously published and two of which are original to the edited collection with all fourteen chapters having been authored or co-authored by Farberman over a career that spans five decades of active scholarship.
Farberman’s tour of interactionism covers three areas of concern within the field: an overview of and unique insights into the perspective generally (consisting of six chapters); an exploration of the different contours of the perspective as interpreted by the author/tour guide (consisting of four chapters); and the presentation of a set of empirical studies (consisting of four chapters). In turn, each of the three broad areas being explored includes numerous specific points of interest, and the convenience of having these otherwise sometimes difficult to find materials readily available is perhaps one of the best points of this collection of work.
By including particular pieces of past work in the collection, the tour guide allows each point of interest, each chapter, and each argument to speak for itself—subject to the interpretation of the reader/tour participant. While the preface to the work (written by Farberman) is sufficient to orient the reader to the broad concerns of the work and the specific interests and themes of each chapter, it serves primarily as a contextualization of the exploration being offered. On the one hand, this allows a more organic interaction between the reader and the material. On the other hand, those less familiar with the material being presented may find themselves lacking a full appreciation for the importance of the material being presented.
In the first section of material—our first six points of interest on the tour—readers are provided analyses of the impact of the early pragmatists on the development of interactionism. From Charles S. Peirce and William James to Charles H. Cooley and George H. Mead, but also inclusive of Karl Mannheim and Louis Wirth, our tour guide asks participants to consider the very development of American social psychology, the development of theories of the self and Mead’s revolutionary approach to the topic, and a line of argument that demonstrates how social factors are linked to mental production and cognition. Two subsequent chapters are the transcripted proceedings of an extensive interview of Herbert Blumer by Farberman and Thomas Morrione. Originally published in 1981, the interview represents a portion of a larger effort by Morrione and Farberman to collect a comprehensive set of course notes, reflections, and recollections of the primary interpreter of symbolic interactionism. These two chapters are insightful, delightfully dense, and enlightening. For those who will never have the opportunity to commune with Herbert Blumer, they are undoubtedly instructive. The final point of interest—the reflective discussion and analysis of the work and contributions of Gregory P. Stone—will, among other concerns, leave one to question how Stone’s work could ever have been forgotten, let alone lost from active consideration as quickly as it has been.
The second area of Farberman’s tour highlights a set of concerns relative to the interactionist perspective more generally. The analysis of the Chicago School of sociology highlights an interactionist approach to the diffusion of the ideas associated with that school of thought and its continuity in urban sociology. In doing so, it tacitly notes the need for understanding how interactionism can approach the dialectical relationships between public and private, mind and body, and other seemingly dualistic concerns. Other points of interest in this section include a line of argumentation that explores the differences between symbolic interactionism and postmodern sociologies, with a call for greater interactionist attention to speaking truth to power in the spirit of pragmatism, and a set of notes that highlights the unique opportunities for the sociology of emotions to address as well as further problematize the disciplinary perception of symbolic interactionism as having both a cognitive and an astructural bias. Nestled between these points of interests is a gem of a narrative from Farberman on the creation of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.
The final stop on the tour includes four studies of human social life from the interactionist perspective. In their own way, each study challenges conventional disciplinary “wisdom” about the interactionist perspective. The first study notes how the extent of personalization of relationship affects class-based commercial interactions. Findings aside, the real lesson for the reader is that interactionism is not methodologically restrictive. The second study is an oft-cited classic in the interactionist approach to social organization on the automobile industry as criminogenic market structure. Here, Farberman reminds the reader that interactionism is fully capable of attending to (and does often attend to) macro-structural phenomena, despite the larger discipline’s insistence otherwise. The exploration of fantasy also narrates the relationship between micro- and macro-processes in the context of the everyday lived experience. Finally, the last stop on Farberman’s tour is an extensive presentation on the contours and pervasiveness of informal care provision to elderly family members.
In a unique way, this last tour stop summarizes the final development of the career argument, and in many ways the very theme of the book: speak power to truth and truth to power; highlight the micro-macro linkages of everyday experience; give voice to those silently suffering; and use the methods most reasonable for the purpose at hand. In this case, the author notes that there are nearly 250,000 households in New York state alone in which at least one member is providing at least 20 hours per week of unpaid elder care for a family member. For the care providers, that’s just everyday life. However, it is also, for the interactionist and pragmatist-inspired sociologists among us, another problem to be resolved.
Farberman’s tour won’t answer all your questions, but if you are willing to explore the contours of the interactionist perspective with him it will deepen your appreciation of what interactionism might still accomplish in our understanding of the social.