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Agency, Structure, and Com parat ive Con texts: Toward a Synthetic lnteractionism
Author(s) -
Fine Gary Alan
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.1992.15.1.87
Subject(s) - ritualization , sociology , epistemology , context (archaeology) , agency (philosophy) , structure and agency , negotiation , generality , identification (biology) , action (physics) , cognitive science , psychology , social psychology , social science , philosophy , paleontology , botany , physics , quantum mechanics , psychotherapist , biology
Recent sociological theorizing has addressed the relationship between agency and structure. Although this issue has not frequently been discussed by interactionists, it is implicitly critical to the perspective. As I argue, an interactionist approach can capture both the objective and subjective components of structures, settings, and events, while reminding us that contexts can be defined at all levels of generality and should be understood in reference to other contexts (a comparative context approach). I raise the core concepts of obdurateness, constraint, negotiation, sedimentation, symbolization, identification, and ritualization, attempting to generalize these concepts into a synthetic interactionism based on the grounding of action in the comparison of contexts. My goal is to develop an understanding of the “interaction order” that does justice to both order and interaction.