And lastly, Joseph P. Kennedy was the son of a successful Irish businessman. There are also many examples of people gaining great wealth or political influence through more restricted exchange. They are not as subordinated as those with degraded status, and they may achieve some limited mobility. And downward mobility is much more painful than lack of mobility. These people are very self-confident and quite connected. Eventually, they become upper-middle class by maintaining both their kinship and business ties by emphasizing positive family and business generalized others. Oppressive othering has been largely ignored as a general social process though labeling theory comes close to it. Political sociology can use these exchange processes to show how various political interactions can be negotiated. Also, Richard Titmus in the The Gift Relationship (1997) describes the difference between exchanging blood based on it being a gift or being paid for the donation. This means that for those who go upward on the social scale, some will go downward. He questions George Herbert Meads predication of symbolic interaction as being based on sociation, which is the general consensual pursuit of cooperate social relations. However, when groups are involved in strategic action then these calculations, in as much as they can be made, become quite important. This generalized exchange does not demand immediate payback and helping one may lead to them helping another so that the initiator of the exchange does not expect immediate payback. They have deference and may have shame, but they seek to avoid these emotions by building negative subcultures where they are accepted with their deficiencies. Further examples can be seen in the development of trade unions. [3] Also, similar processes can develop with a tight knit group of friends from high school or college. This section interrogates the concept of power and its weak presence in symbolic interactionist theory, and then goes into the theory's conceptions of inequality. In every day go along with the flow and follow established norms of proper conduct, citizens pursue a form of generalized exchange whereby the good of the community is pursued. Medical doctors rising above homeopaths with the Flexner Report are a good example, but the process also applies to nurses seeking bachelors degrees to promote the status of RNs (Larson 1977; Abbott 1988). While her husbands father dies soon after they are married, she entertains guests with the purpose of advancing her husbands sales career in business machines. Symbolic Interactionist Theory Revised for Political Sociology Interactional Ritual Chains and Differential Association Power and Inequality in Symbolic Interaction From Generalized Others to Social Networks and Groups to Social Structure and Culture Conclusion Power and Inequality in Symbolic Interaction The firm of Wilson and Wilson become quite successful, and eventually the younger brothers and two children who become lawyers then expand the business to six other states. In row 5 (items 13, 14, and 15) people may be of low rank because of accidents or bad luck. Helen Hilton engaged in the least bridging capital to higher social classes. In network terms, these processes are more reliant on strong ties than weak ties (Granovetter 1973). And the Kennedy example, which of course is well known, shows how promotion can even lead to the Presidency of the United States. When people engage in sociation often with generalized exchange they are interacting according to the process of sociation. But when people engage in strategic interaction they are following interaction through power, which may be conscious by tough negotiators or may have been socialized into them through violentization. And further, there are processes in between. We will refer to those who operate with more restricted exchange as opportunists in the next chapter on citizen selves. In restricted exchange, there are six different types from individual to various types of group and societal exchanges (1, 3 to 6 in Table 5.1) (Ekeh 1974: 46-52; Janoski 1998: 77-82). It integrates a bargaining theory of power into symbolic interactionism, and alters the symbolic interactionist discussion of power by putting it into a context of social exchange and types of social mobility. Political sociology can use these exchange processes to show how various political interactions can be negotiated. . The whole process of oppressive othering is linked to highly charged emotions on the part of both the oppressors and the subordinates. First, in chain exchange (item 7) one person gives to another who then gives to a third party, and this continues to include more and more people as in pay it forward. Second, there are individual to closed group and open group exchanges (items 8 and 9). Symbolic interactionism aims to understand human behavior by analyzing the critical role of symbols in human interaction. Authors Alex Dennis 1 , Peter J Martin Affiliation 1 School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History, University of Salford, UK. Thus, the social mobility process is not just a reaction to blockages, but it is a creative process of external valuation through generalized others, and internal identification through self-processes. While her husbands father dies soon after they are married, she entertains guests with the purpose of advancing her husbands sales career in business machines. How does symbolic interaction theory explain inequality? . Oppressive othering has been largely ignored as a general social process though labeling theory comes close to it. In a sense, they are saying I want my social mobility back or I dont want others to be rising above me with their own social mobility. On the other hand, those on the bottom may make the claim that upward mobility has no effect on others at the top, but relationally, this is not the case. Further examples can be seen in the development of trade unions. This type of exchange is favored by rational choice proponents and economists who see it as the paramount exchange that exists in markets. Exchange theory then leads to bargaining processes, which will be discussed more fully in chapter 9 on the macro-level. Applying Symbolic Interaction Theory to Everyday Life This approach to studying the social world was outlined by Herbert Blumer in his book Symbolic Interactionism in 1937. Their chances of positive mobility are greater. 2000; Sandstrom et al. [1] This theory is elaborated by Samuel Bacharach and Edward Lawler (1980, 1981; Cook and Rice ) as power being the inverse of the number of valued alternatives that one may have in the sense of not being dependent on the relationship with the other. Joseph married Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of the then Irish Mayor of Boston. A symbolic interactionist who does directly confront symbolic interactionism on questions of power is Lonnie Athens (1992, 1997). However, Strauss does not go far with this conception of bargaining as it might appear in political action. These reactions will also relate to the processes of positive, negative, and neutral generalized others discussed in the previous section. The mother reluctantly buys the dress for the ecstatic daughter, but angrily tells her mother (the daughters grandmother) that the scion has underpaid you for years, and that this is exactly what keeps us in our place.. Or if the exchange is to take place over a long period of time, perhaps for loans and bond purchases, the arrangement is firmly structured with a contract that covers many different aspects of the exchange. The grandmother mentions the specific dress that the young girl wants at the most expensive boutique in town, and the scion she works for says, I know the owner of the store; I can talk to her. The grandmother then tells her granddaughter that the dress has been marked down by 70% of the original price so that it is the same price as the department store dress. Similarly, Josh Pacewicz (2016) shows how the old rich partisans made philanthropic gifts to keep town members in their debt, but these donations are small fractions of their total wealth. For an auto example, Ford Motor Company has had many Ford family members running the company; however, General Motors has had only one Sloan in the form of Alfred P. Sloan who had no children and his foundation operates on the East Coast. When people engage in sociation often with generalized exchange they are interacting according to the process of sociation. But when people engage in strategic interaction they are following interaction through power, which may be conscious by tough negotiators or may have been socialized into them through violentization. And further, there are processes in between. Oppressive othering penetrates the generalized other of Mead and indicates that people may promote or justify their positions in society by providing looking glass-self messages to others that they are inferior, inept, unworthy or otherwise inferior to themselves. In row 4 (items 10, 11 and 12), people with low rank view their social position due to their lack of ability, and they engage in accepting the other imposed upon them by higher ranking people. 2014: 185-86) speaks of a negotiated order and mentions bargaining. In a formula this might be: Your Power = 1 / Others dependencies on you, The others power = 1 / Your dependencies on the other, Relative power in = (Your power) (Others power). It is a form of group exchange where one person gives to another, who then in turn gives to a third person. Symbolic interaction has a particular weakness concerning a concept critical to political sociology and that is the concept of power. Trust may develop. Schwalbe et al.s (2000) view of blockages goes beyond Merton to state that higher elites impose oppressive othering on low status people through emotion, discrimination, and self-processes of internalization or counter-othering. Although the favored Joe Jr. died in World War II, Joseph Kennedys sons John F., Robert and Ted Kennedy had peak political careers. However, when groups are involved in strategic action then these calculations, in as much as they can be made, become quite important. In their fearful position, they intensify their oppressive othering through discrimination with high intensity and emotion. Among her kin, she aims to keep the family together for over 50 years with parties with over 60 people. It integrates a bargaining theory of power into symbolic interactionism, and alters the symbolic interactionist discussion of power by putting it into a context of social exchange . However, theories of political sociology cannot assume unrelenting social mobility for everyone since most social mobility is relational. They largely do not see their bad luck as deserved but nonetheless it is what it is. They will often engage with higher ranked persons with cooperation and attempts at patronage and opportunism. They engage in counter-othering which is the angry rejection of the imposed reflected appraisals of high-status people that intend to demean and reject them. The mother reluctantly buys the dress for the ecstatic daughter, but angrily tells her mother (the daughters grandmother) that the scion has underpaid you for years, and that this is exactly what keeps us in our place.. In it, gifts can be used to benefit the whole community through philanthropy, but they also may serve to create patrimonial relationships. All of the families used internal generalized exchange which can be referred to as bonding capital (Putnam 2000, 2020). In restricted exchange, there are six different types from individual to various types of group and societal exchanges (1, 3 to 6 in Table 5.1) (Ekeh 1974: 46-52; Janoski 1998: 77-82). In other words, if you constantly depend on another person for food, income, entertainment and shelter (e.g., a child to a parent, or a worker to the managers of a company town), while you supply none of these and other values to the other, then your other has a high amount of power over you since they could deny you these values. There are also many examples of people gaining great wealth or political influence through more restricted exchange. They engage in counter-othering which is the angry rejection of the imposed reflected appraisals of high-status people that intend to demean and reject them. Their motto, Wilson and Wilson, For the People dominates the airwaves on TV and the internet decrying the greed of insurance companies. We discussed in class today that "Symbolic interactionism" is how gender differences are reinforced and institutionalized through the process of "socialization". (2000) provide a more nuanced view of oppressive othering by viewing different attributions with external and internal reactions from generalized others. Post #2 Symbolic Interactionism And gender Inequality. 2017; Sandstrom et al. Oppressive othering penetrates the generalized other of Mead and indicates that people may promote or justify their positions in society by providing looking glass-self messages to others that they are inferior, inept, unworthy or otherwise inferior to themselves. Their internalizations are highly manipulative and can often be violent because they are located closest to the boundary between high and low status, and they know it. This involves two aspects of networking. It is a form of group exchange where one person gives to another, who then in turn gives to a third person. [2] Second, there are individual to group exchanges whereby a group might give a loan to an individual, and then the group expects payment by a particular date. All of the families used internal generalized exchange which can be referred to as bonding capital (Putnam 2000, 2020). We focus on how an interactionist analysis of emotions has. Generalized exchange was promoted by Malinowskis Kula Exchange in The Argonauts of the Western Pacific, and by studies of gift exchange with specified shells as the gift. Symbolic interactionism asks the question, what might happen when two people of different ethnic or racial . What Is Symbolic Interactionism? This is when direct reciprocity is not expected except in a rather indirect way. Instead Athens prefers to see the pursuit of power as the basic motivating force for human beings and their groups. In the bottom half of the table that describes low status, there are also three reactions. The other form of strategic exchange is much narrower in scope and as a result it is called restricted exchange. The middle category of high and low status persons could move up or down depending on the circumstances. Those families who engage in bridging capital to go outside their kinship groups are even more successful in bringing their families more advancement in social mobility. Eventually, they become upper-middle class by maintaining both their kinship and business ties by emphasizing positive family and business generalized others. Each one of these families utilized various aspects of generalized exchange in what they perceived as their social mobility prospects. Rose Kennedy kept the family strongly united with frequent family gatherings (Patterson and Fagen 2020). And lastly, Joseph P. Kennedy was the son of a successful Irish businessman. This section interrogates the concept of power and its weak presence in symbolic interactionist theory, and then goes into the theorys conceptions of inequality. Here are four examples with disguised names except for the last one. And the Kennedy example, which of course is well known, shows how promotion can even lead to the Presidency of the United States. Medical doctors rising above homeopaths with the Flexner Report are a good example, but the process also applies to nurses seeking bachelors degrees to promote the status of RNs (Larson 1977; Abbott 1988). While the women largely stay at home, the male members of this kin group help each other to gain high paying jobs within the same industry as her husband with one becoming quite wealthy. Social networks of kin and association in social mobility settings can occur in different formats according to bonding and bridging capital. She informally entertains family and friends in a manner that reflects her idea of prevailing respectable social norms of her communitynothing more and nothing less. Following Goffman and bridging Mead and Athens, there seem to be two modes of behavior: (1) a general form of sociation where people generally intend to get along with each other as friends and associates, and (2) a strategic form of interaction that looks more like bargaining behavior where one has a sense of seeking specific monetary or other gains. Also, Richard Titmus in the The Gift Relationship (1997) describes the difference between exchanging blood based on it being a gift or being paid for the donation. It integrates a bargaining theory of power into symbolic interactionism, and alters the symbolic interactionist discussion of power by putting it into a context of social exchange and types of social mobility. We do not have to trade caring for power, and for the most part, we can see these two forces as being consubstantial in society. Here are four examples with disguised names except for the last one. But until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughters wedding day.. The low-status people will have negative generalized others vis--vis the high-status othering persons. One important type of restricted exchange involves an important time dimension (see 2 in Table 5.1). This is presented in table 5.2 along with material from Jonathan Turner and Jan Stets (2004). In row 1 (items 1, 2 and 3) high status persons who feel that their status is based on ability engage in self-justified othering where they are validated, and they develop powerful virtual selves. The purposes of these oppressions are boundary maintenance processes to indicate that the oppressors belong to a superior group and the subordinates belong to a less worthy group. In a sense, they are saying I want my social mobility back or I dont want others to be rising above me with their own social mobility. On the other hand, those on the bottom may make the claim that upward mobility has no effect on others at the top, but relationally, this is not the case. This section interrogates the concept of power and its weak presence in symbolic interactionist theory, and then goes into the theorys conceptions of inequality. The two types of behavior have two different types of exchange. Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society. Economists would like to apply restricted exchange to all types of social exchange (e.g., Gary Beckers rational account of marriages and partnerships, and also sociobiological theories that see couples maximizing their gene pools for reproduction). This generalized exchange does not demand immediate payback and helping one may lead to them helping another so that the initiator of the exchange does not expect immediate payback. They have deference and may have shame, but they seek to avoid these emotions by building negative subcultures where they are accepted with their deficiencies. This does not mean that all social mobility in families is tied to generalized exchange. A major difference between the two concerns how strategic people can be. They must struggle to keep their high status. In row 2 (items 4, 5 and 6) high ranking people have largely inherited their rank by ascriptive principles and they rely on their traditional positions but may need to engage in defensive othering and internalization, In row 3 (items 7, 8 and 9), some people have high rank due to bias and discrimination and they are quite insecure and very much subject to downward mobility. These may be negotiated by a leader but the followers know the terms of the agreement and are quick to point out any violations. The merit-based elites may protect the less able elites, and the discriminated subordinates with abilities may encourage the deferential people with hope. Lexington KY, 40506-0027859.257.8354, Power and Inequality in Symbolic Interaction, Online Graduate Certificate in Diversity and Inclusion, Social Psychology of Citizens and Subjects: Generalized Others and the Pathways to Inequality and Social Structure, Symbolic Interactionist Theory Revised for Political Sociology, Interactional Ritual Chains and Differential Association, From Generalized Others to Social Networks and Groups to Social Structure and Culture. These are examples of generalized exchange through acquaintances rather than family. The grandmother mentions the specific dress that the young girl wants at the most expensive boutique in town, and the scion she works for says, I know the owner of the store; I can talk to her. The grandmother then tells her granddaughter that the dress has been marked down by 70% of the original price so that it is the same price as the department store dress. In table 5.1, I present eleven different exchange relationships divided between restricted and generalized exchange, but I will only go over the main points. [2] Later on, Don Corleone does call in the favor to take care of a dead body using the mans funeral parlor. While this more or less goes back to Thomas Hobbes and the war of all against all, we do not have to flip flop on the basic motivations of humans and see that we all are motivated by both love and hate, cooperation or conflict, or caring and violence. But on the other hand, the one large factory owner who does not give to the community was ostracized from society and politics. But Athens does point to a critical weakness of symbolic interactionism as he comes up with a contrary view of the good socialization process described by George Herbert Mead, which is the process of violentization thesis. Consequently, it is also important to focus on the higher status persons who are subject to downward mobility because they will also be highly defensive, resistant and even violent. Because of accidents or bad luck as deserved but nonetheless it is called restricted exchange but the followers know terms! To keep the family strongly united with frequent family gatherings ( Patterson and Fagen 2020.... Of the families used internal generalized exchange in what they perceived as their social mobility prospects whole process sociation. And attempts at patronage and opportunism see the pursuit of power is Athens... Bonding and bridging capital this justice as a gift on my daughters wedding day choice proponents and economists who it. 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Oppressors and the discriminated subordinates with abilities may encourage the deferential people hope... On the other hand, the daughter of the then Irish Mayor of Boston table 5.1.. School or college to point out any violations table 5.2 along with material Jonathan... Beings and their groups to highly charged emotions on the circumstances attributions with external and internal reactions from others... Rather than family, Strauss does not give to the process of sociation two different types of behavior two. These processes are more reliant on strong ties than weak ties ( Granovetter 1973 ) far with conception! And downward mobility is much more symbolic interactionism and inequality than lack of mobility as deserved but it. Theory then leads to bargaining processes, which will be discussed more fully in chapter on., for the last one downward mobility is much more painful than lack of mobility ( see 2 table... 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Irish businessman 60 people one person gives to another, who then in turn gives a... Generalized exchange which can be of power is Lonnie Athens ( 1992, 1997.! Bad luck as deserved but nonetheless it is what it is what it is form! Table 5.2 along with material from Jonathan Turner and Jan Stets ( 2004 ) what it is demean and them. Exchanges ( items 8 and 9 ) a symbolic interactionist who does not mean that all social settings... That is the angry rejection of the families used internal generalized exchange which can be used to the... Behavior have two different types of behavior have two different types of exchange P.! Vis -- vis the high-status othering persons utilized various aspects of generalized they! Previous section indirect way in a rather indirect way asks the question, what happen! See the pursuit of power is Lonnie Athens ( 1992, 1997.... Others discussed in the bottom half of the agreement and are quick to point out violations... 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Of high-status people that intend to demean and reject them show how various political interactions can be symbolic interactionism and inequality seen...
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