Postmodern Thought in Symbolic Interaction: Reconstructing Social Inquiry in Light of Late-Modern Concerns

Abstract

Perspectives in sociology are currently being reassessed in light of postmodernism, which has been associated with the abandonment of faith in the social self and scientific inquiry. As an emergent problematic, postmodernism stands in sharp contrast to a modernist pragmatic (and innocent) conception of symbolic interactionism — which is centered in the Meadian conception of prosocial selves. However, this article identifies some “late‐modern” interactionists — Goffman, Stone, Becker, Lemert, and Mills— who, in providing a corrective for an innocent pragmatic inquiry into the self, created a foundation for contemporary inquiry into the social. This corrective entailed a reconceptualization of the self as the focal point of the situated act and, specifically, its changing definition from cooperative and reflective to strategic and imaginary. While we suggest that their work represented a loss of innocence in interactionism, it did not create a loss of faith in scientific inquiry into the self and social action. Rather, the work of the late modernists has inspired a reconstruction of scientific inquiry into the social that encompasses, but is not encompassed by, postmodernism.

Time, Gender, and the Negotiation of Family Schedules

“…The negotiated order perspective recognizes that interaction is asymmetrical and that disjunctures, conflicts, and disparate objectives are part of enacting cooperative and conflicting agendas simultaneously (Katovich and Reese 1993). Power processes contribute to understanding how negotiated time can project both shared and disparate futures.…”

Narrative Analysis and the New Historical Sociology

“…This disciplinary sea change is not only happening in sociology but is apparent in other fields and recent interdisciplinary debates. For example, the recent turn toward skeptical epistemology, literary theory, and textual deconstruction in history, cultural studies, and historical sociology has sparked lively debates across scholarly disciplines on the role and meaning of narrative (Kivisto 1995;Gottdiener 1995;Graham 1994;Fuchs and Ward 1994;Agger 1994;Dickens and Fontana 1994;Katovich and Reese 1993;Denzin 1991;Best and Kellner 1991;Koditschek 1993;Palmer 1990;Watts 1991;Shank 1992). The idea that historians and sociologists deal with "facts" and that their texts reflect a historical reality has begun to crumble under the assault of postmodernism, poststructuralism, and variants of feminist epistemology.…”

On Postmodernism, Pragmatism, and Plasterers: Some Interactionist Thoughts and Queries

“…The postmodernist rendition of eras, however, has already been critiqued from a number of standpoints. Mestrovic (1 992), for example, has argued that some modernist theorists, such as Durkheim, were more postmodernist than the postmodernists themselves; Gubrium and Holstein (1994) have argued that postmodernism as an era can be defined only through modernist procedures; Best (1995) observes that "then" and "now" are basic categories for everyone and do not in themselves prove anything about historical transformations; and Katovich and Reese (1993) have identified an interstitial phase that they call late modernism that contains elements of each era articulated by the postmodernists. So, my remarks join already-existing critiques that themselves constitute alternative interpretations of the postmodernist historiography (see also Rogers 1992).…”