Children's Negotiation of Meaning*

Abstract

Focusing on the interaction of children with other children in day care centers, this paper examines the various ways in which children take the role of the other toward oneself. Using a sample of sixty‐two children aged two to four, data was provided from a field work study involving intensive participant observation. Within a Meadian perspective, a model of negotiating meaning emerged with four characteristic stances of children's involvement in the process of taking children into account. Each stance is outlined using field work examples. The overall result is the provision of a continuum of interaction which documents the basic ways in which individuals move from the realm of private understandings to public or shared objects of attention.

Beyond Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in Interpretive IS Research: The Example of Symbolic Interactionist Ethnography

“…Exemplar studies in those fields include many insightful works by various Chicago School sociologists on the action-seeking lifestyles of street youths [Sato 1992] -a particularly noteworthy study is Whyte's [1943] Street Corner Society. A more recent study by Mandell [1992] on childhood socialization also provides very interesting insights on the Meadian question of how little children move from private, hidden meanings to publicly shared understandings of involvement objects, and on how as an ethnographer, she [Mandell] did not try to "become a child" (a virtual impossibility) while trying to become as "minimally adult" as possible (a dialectical tension nevertheless). Such insights would not have been possible without leveraging the combined strengths of symbolic interactionism and ethnography.…”

“…A "moving" thick description (that incorporates processuality and/or temporality while offering rich insights) will therefore do greater justice to the strengths of the interactionist ethnographic approach -a good example of such an account that goes beyond descriptive detail is that of Mandell [1992] which indicates how little children gradually move from private meanings to publicly shared understandings of involvement objects. In the IS context, such processuality is especially important since the interactionist researcher needs to focus not only on human-tohuman interactions but also on two-way human-IT interactions, in keeping with the socially constituted nature of information technology [Orlikowski 1992;Orlikowski and Robey 1991].…”

Objects, Meanings, and Role Identities: The Practices that Establish Association in the Case of Home‐Based Employment1

“…Symbolic interactionist and dramaturgical perspectives alike position social interaction as a vast defining process in which the meaning of objects is being established, affirmed, or revised through the interplay of indications and responses (Blumer, 1969; Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg‐Halton, 1981; Dittmar, 1992; Hewitt, 1989; Mead, 1934) As the defining process (interaction) undergoes change, new sets of meanings emerge from the correlative sets of activity (see Blumer, 1969; Casper, 1998; Cohen, 1989; Lewis, 1991; Mardell, 1984; Silver, 1996). If, for instance, objects are affirmed and reaffirmed in their meanings, they continue with a fixed character.…”

Sociologia da infância: balanço dos trabalhos em língua inglesa

“…Numa publicação de 1991, encontram-se alguns trabalhos interessantes sobre as interações de crianças e sobre o trabalho que elas fornecem para criar e para manter seu pequeno mundo. Um dos capítulos (Mandell, 1991) analisa a maneira que as crianças negociam as significações atribuídas às interações sociais, tendo em conta os pontos de vista de seus colegas e procurando comunicar os seus. No rastro de Mead, ela procurou observar junto às crianças a relação destas consigo mesmas, com o outro e com os objetos, que pressupõe todas as formas de interação.…”