This book is a survey of Symbolic Interaction. In thirteen short
chapters, it traces the history, the social philosophical roots, the
founders, "movers and shakers" and evolution of the theory. Symbolic
Interactionism: The Basics takes the reader along the exciting, but
tortuous journey of the theory and explores both the meta-theoretical
and mini-theoretical roots and branches of the theory. Symbolic
interactionism or sociological social psychology traces its roots to the
works of United States sociologists George Hebert Mead, Charles Horton
Cooley, and Herbert Blumer, and a Canadian sociologist, Erving Goffman;
Other influences are Harold Garfinkel's Ethnomethodology and
Austrian-American Alfred Schutz's study of Phenomenology.
Symbolic Interactionism: Basics explores the philosophical sources of
symbolic interactionism, including pragmatism, social behaviorism, and
neo-Hegelianism. The intellectual origins of symbolic interactions can
be attributed to the works of William James, George Simmel, John Dewey,
Max Weber, and George Herbert Mead. Mead is believed to be the founder
of the theory, although he did not publish any academic work on the
paradigm. The book highlights the works of the intellectual heirs of
symbolic interactionism-- Herbert Blumer, Mead's former student, who was
instrumental in publishing the lectures his former professor
posthumously with the title Symbolic Interactionism, Erving Goffman and
Robert Park.
