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Inequality and the Self: Exploring Connections from an Interactionist Perspective
Author(s) -
Anderson Leon,
Snow David A.
Publication year - 2001
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.2001.24.4.395
Subject(s) - symbolic interactionism , situated , interactionism , sociology , everyday life , epistemology , social inequality , the symbolic , social psychology , inequality , perspective (graphical) , social stratification , life course approach , negotiation , psychology , social science , psychoanalysis , computer science , philosophy , mathematical analysis , mathematics , artificial intelligence
Symbolic interactionism provides a major contribution to understanding inequality by illuminating the various manifestations and contexts of inequality at the micro, everyday level of social life. Drawing on a spectrum of symbolic interactionist theory and research, we examine the range of symbolic and interactional manifestations of social inequality, the consequences of being the object of patterned interactional affronts, and the strategies people use to negotiate interactional stigmatization in everyday life. We argue that symbolic interaction's unique contribution to understanding inequality results from two of the perspective's central features. First, symbolic interactionism emphasizes the necessity of investigating social life in situated social interaction. Second, it highlights social actors' capacities to interpret and construct lines of action rather than respond directly to the stimuli they encounter. Symbolic interactionist research and theory thus contribute to a more complex understanding of social stratification than that provided by perspectives focused exclusively on macroscopic structural factors .