Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory holding that society and the self are not fixed, external structures but are continuously built and rebuilt through everyday interaction, in which people use shared symbols and language to interpret and respond to one another's actions. Its roots lie in George Herbert Mead's University of Chicago lectures on the social nature of mind and self, delivered from the 1890s until his death in 1931, drawing on the American pragmatist tradition. Mead never published a systematic statement of the theory or used the term; his students compiled his lectures into Mind, Self, and Society (1934) after his death. It was Mead's student Herbert Blumer who, in 1937, coined the term 'symbolic interactionism' and formalized it around three core premises: people act toward things based on the meanings those things hold, such meanings arise from social interaction, and meanings are actively interpreted and modified by the individual.
Facts
Core ClaimSourced to the subject's own accountSociety is constructed and continuously reconstructed through everyday face-to-face interaction, in which individuals act on the basis of meanings that arise from, and are modified through, their social and symbolic interactions with others. 1 Origin YearSourced to the subject's own accountTheoretical foundations laid by Mead from the 1890s through his death in 1931 (lectures published posthumously in 1934 as Mind, Self, and Society); the term itself was coined by Herbert Blumer in 1937. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Social constructionism traces its roots to symbolic interactionism and phenomenology.
Developed By
Institutions Informed
Becker and Lemert both worked in the Chicago-school interactionist tradition; labeling theory's claim that meaning (here, a deviant identity) is produced through social interaction rather than fixed in the act itself builds directly on symbolic interactionism's own premises.
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
How faithfully does Herbert Blumer's formalized "symbolic interactionism" (1937 onward) represent George Herbert Mead's own thinking, given that Mead's own texts are themselves posthumous compilations of student lecture notes rather than a work Mead approved?
Mead never used the term "symbolic interactionism" and published no systematic statement of the theory in his lifetime; Mind, Self, and Society (1934) was assembled by his students from lecture notes after his death, and Blumer built and named the formal theory decades later, working from that posthumously edited material rather than a text Mead himself finalized, leaving open how much of "Meadian" theory is Mead's own view versus his editors' and Blumer's synthesis.
What would resolve this A comparison of surviving primary lecture transcripts and Mead's own published journal articles against Blumer's later three-premise formulation, checking which elements can be traced directly to Mead's own words versus editorial or Blumer's interpretive additions.
History of sociological theoryWikipedia: Symbolic Interactionism
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