Symbolic Interactionism

How does a small gesture become a reason to act?

Suppose a class representative posts a draft programme schedule in a group. A lecturer adds a thumbs-up reaction. Some students read it as final approval and begin making arrangements. Others understand it as an acknowledgement that the draft has been received.

The gesture matters through the meaning participants give it. Their next actions also change the situation. A booking request, a question and a clarification can turn an ambiguous reaction into an agreed procedure.

A symbol can be a word, gesture, image, object or other meaningful expression. A badge may signal authority; a microphone may mark a speaking turn; a group reaction may acknowledge, encourage or approve. Its use becomes intelligible within a history of interaction.

Think of a familiar greeting

A wave becomes a greeting when participants recognise what it is doing. The same movement can invite someone forward, attract attention or close a conversation in another setting. People draw on the situation and the responses of others to decide how to continue.

Three questions to carry through the chapter

• Meaning: what does this gesture, object or situation mean to the participants?
• Self: how do people anticipate others’ responses and come to see themselves?
• Action: how are individual interpretations fitted together into a social activity?

In my lecture, I explain how meaning, mind and self emerge through communication and role-taking. This chapter develops those ideas through everyday encounters and media practices.

The perspective grows from a social account of meaning and action.

Symbolic interactionism developed through American pragmatism, social psychology and sociology. Pragmatist thought directs attention towards action, problematic situations and the consequences through which ideas are tested and revised.

George Herbert Mead is a foundational figure. He examined how mind and self develop within social activity. His Mind, Self, and Society appeared posthumously in 1934, edited by Charles W. Morris from materials associated with his teaching.

Herbert Blumer introduced the term “symbolic interactionism” in 1937 and later gave the perspective a systematic statement in Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969).

Start with an unfolding encounter

The approach often begins with close attention to everyday interaction: a classroom exchange, an interview, a meeting, a message thread or a production routine. Follow how participants recognise what is happening and decide what to do next.

A small encounter can carry institutional histories. Participants bring positions such as teacher, student, editor or source into the situation. Those positions become consequential through expectations, permissions and responses.

A developing research tradition

The tradition includes different emphases. Blumer’s work stresses interpretation and close familiarity with social worlds. Structural identity approaches examine how commitments and social positions relate to identities and role performance. Other developments investigate labelling, negotiation and mediated self-presentation.

Identify the formulation used in a study. This keeps a shared concern with interaction connected to the particular concepts and evidence through which an argument is made.

Connect encounters with organised life

A newsroom’s understanding of “professionalism” travels through recruitment, training, editing and public criticism. Close observation can reveal how these connected activities give a category practical force.

Follow the connections beyond one exchange when the question requires it. A comment in an editorial meeting may refer to a style guide, a complaint or an earlier dispute. These records carry histories into present interpretation. The analysis can explain how an expectation becomes durable and how a challenge to it gains a hearing.

People learn what things signify through their use with others.

Symbolic communication draws on learned associations and practices. A word, uniform, emoji or photograph can stand for something beyond its immediate appearance. People learn its uses through participation, instruction, correction and observation.

Mead’s significant symbol is especially important. It enables the person using a gesture, notably a vocal gesture, to evoke in themselves a corresponding attitude to the response it calls out in others. This makes anticipation and coordination possible.

A gesture enters a social act

An interviewer says, “Please continue,” while pausing and looking towards the guest. The expression helps organise the next speaking turn. The interviewer can anticipate its meaning for the guest and adjust if the guest appears uncertain.

Language expands this capacity by providing a rich system of shared symbols. Images, gestures, spatial arrangements and other nonverbal practices also participate in meaning-making.

Blumer’s physical, social and abstract categories provide a way to compare objects of action. Across these categories, investigate how participants learn and use meanings in social activity.

Meanings have histories

Participants enter a situation with earlier experiences. A group that regularly uses reactions to acknowledge messages may interpret a thumbs-up differently from a group that uses it to approve a final decision.

Trace how that convention was learned. Look for reminders, corrections, repeated examples and moments when people disagree. These encounters reveal how a shared meaning is maintained or revised.

Meaning and material circumstances

A microphone’s technical operation and its social meaning can both affect an interview. Examine how participants use the equipment, understand the setting and respond to one another. The interpretation becomes part of the explanation of the event.

Meanings can be contested

A publication may describe an interview as “balanced”, while a source calls it “unfair”. Each expression invokes standards that require investigation. Ask what participants count as balance, which examples they cite and who can make the final editorial decision.

The dispute reveals meaning in use. It can also expose the authority and procedures through which one interpretation becomes the published account.

Meaning guides action, develops socially and changes through interpretation.

Blumer organises the perspective around three connected premises. Each directs attention towards a different part of an unfolding activity.

Interpretation involves self-interaction

A participant can pause and ask, “Does this mean the draft is approved?” The person indicates something to themselves, considers possible meanings and chooses a response. Thinking enters the activity as part of its organisation.

Interpretation can also move quickly through familiar routines. The researcher studies when an expectation is taken for granted, when it becomes problematic and how participants respond.

Follow the sequence of consequences

A meaning becomes analytically important when it helps explain a course of action. Compare the account given by a participant with the message history, their next action and the responses that follow.

Suppose two students read the same reaction differently. One books equipment; the other waits for a written decision. Their accounts, actions and later discussion reveal the relationship between interpretation and coordination.

Foundational statement: Blumer (1969). The linked publisher record presents a later reissue.

People learn to address themselves through the attitudes of others.

Mead analyses mind as a social process involving significant symbols, anticipation and the ability to consider possible responses. A person can rehearse an action, imagine its reception and choose how to proceed.

The self involves the capacity to become an object to oneself. A student can consider, “How am I coming across as the class representative?” The person who acts can also reflect on their own conduct.

Role-taking makes adjustment possible

An editor reviewing a student’s first report can anticipate uncertainty about a comment. A student can consider the editor’s need for clear sourcing. Each uses an understanding of the other’s position to adjust what they say and do.

Role-taking can be more or less informed. An interview, observation or follow-up question can reveal where an anticipated response differs from the other person’s account.

The conversation with oneself

A student drafting an email may imagine a lecturer’s response, change the opening and add a specific question. The internal conversation draws on language, earlier encounters and learned expectations about the relationship.

Mead’s analysis locates reflection within social activity. Bodies and their capacities make participation possible; the theory’s focus is how symbolic communication organises anticipation and self-direction.

Self and interaction develop together

As people learn to address themselves, they can evaluate and revise their conduct. That conduct then affects how others respond. The resulting process links self-understanding with continuing relations.

A novice interviewer may come to see themselves as capable through preparation, a successful exchange, feedback and reflection. The developing self also influences which opportunities the person seeks next.

Continuity through changing situations

People carry memories, commitments and habits into new settings. A student editor who becomes a reporter can recognise continuity in an interest in accurate storytelling while learning different responsibilities and expectations.

Ask how the person connects these experiences when describing themselves. A story about becoming more confident is itself an interpretation that can be compared with opportunities, feedback and changing practices.

Read Mead (1934) and his earlier essay, “The Social Self” (1913).

The self involves an organised social standpoint and a response to it.

Mead distinguishes the “Me”, the organised attitudes of others that a person takes towards themselves, from the “I”, the person’s response to those attitudes. These are related phases of the self as an ongoing process.

Creativity within social life

The response can sustain an established practice or introduce something new. The student might follow the usual procedure, challenge it or suggest a more workable one. Its significance becomes clearer as the activity unfolds.

Novel responses can change shared expectations. A useful clarification may become the group’s standard way of distinguishing acknowledgement from approval.

Study the relation through evidence

Interview accounts can reveal how people describe expectations and reflect on action. Drafts, messages and observations help reconstruct what happened. Treat a retrospective account as a meaningful account given in the present and compare it with other records.

Imagined judgements of others can shape how people feel about themselves.

Charles Horton Cooley’s looking-glass self explains a process through which people imagine how they appear to others, imagine others’ judgement of that appearance, and experience a resulting self-feeling.

Suppose a student presenter notices a guest smiling during an interview. The student imagines that they appear well prepared, attributes approval to the guest and feels more confident. Another interpretation of the same smile could produce a different self-feeling.

Some audiences matter more

A comment from a respected teacher, close friend or professional editor may carry particular force. The person’s interpretation draws on the relationship, earlier experiences and the kind of recognition being sought.

Consider how the student’s confidence might change after a specific explanation: “Your follow-up question helped me clarify the issue.” The feedback provides a more definite basis for interpreting the encounter.

Recognition, feedback and media

Comments, audience reactions and visible metrics can become resources through which creators evaluate themselves. Their significance depends on what creators believe those signals represent.

A student might understand a low response as evidence of poor work, limited circulation or an unsuitable posting time. Follow how that interpretation is reached and whether further conversation changes it.

Connect self-feeling with later action

The analytical question extends beyond an emotion at one moment. Ask whether the person volunteers again, revises a style, seeks reassurance or withdraws. Compare their account with the sequence of encounters and opportunities.

Cooley introduced the idea in Human Nature and the Social Order (1902). The linked text is the revised 1922 edition.

People learn to participate within increasingly organised expectations.

Socialisation involves learning meanings, roles and ways of acting through participation with others. Children and adults encounter instructions, examples, responses and opportunities to revise what they understand.

Mead’s discussion of play and the game examines how role-taking develops. It moves from considering particular others towards taking account of an organised set of attitudes within a shared activity.

From a particular role to an organised activity

Playing an interviewer can involve asking questions and imagining a guest’s response. Producing a programme requires attention to the guest, editor, camera operator, schedule and audience as an organised activity.

The generalised other names the organised social standpoint through which a person can view and regulate their own conduct. A publication’s expectations about verification, attribution and respectful interviewing can enter a student’s judgement about what to do.

Expectations can differ across settings

A person participates in several communities. A classroom, newsroom, family group and gaming community can organise different expectations. Participants learn which standpoint is relevant and how to handle competing demands.

The student may find a joke appropriate among friends while anticipating that it will be read differently in a professional account. This is a question about learned audiences, roles and situations.

Rules are learned and interpreted

A newcomer can learn an editorial rule by observing a correction, asking for an explanation and trying again. The rule becomes part of competent participation through these practices.

People can also question or revise a convention. A new contributor might ask why a source category excludes some voices. The resulting discussion can change both the practice and members’ understanding of their responsibilities.

Learning continues across a life

Mead’s play–game distinction supplies an account of role-taking and coordination. Similar analytical questions remain useful when adults enter a new profession, organisation or online community. Investigate the particular learning process and the expectations being acquired.

An organised standpoint can guide conduct when other members are absent. A student checking a quotation alone may anticipate what the publication requires and what a source should be able to expect. The wider community enters the person’s self-direction through learned standards and relationships.

People coordinate by interpreting what kind of situation they are in.

A definition of the situation is an account of what is happening, who is involved, what matters and what conduct is appropriate. Participants may initially share it, negotiate it or act through competing definitions.

In the class group, the status of a schedule can be defined as “a proposal for discussion” or “a confirmed programme”. Each definition makes a different line of action reasonable to participants.

Definitions have consequences

The formulation associated with W. I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas’s The Child in America (1928) emphasises that definitions of situations can produce real consequences. People act on an understanding, and their action changes relationships and circumstances.

Suppose students treat the reaction as approval and request a room. That request creates work and expectations even if the lecturer intended only acknowledgement. The interpretation and the verifiable message history both belong in the explanation.

Negotiated order

Anselm Strauss’s work on negotiation examines how agreements and working arrangements contribute to social order within wider contexts. A newsroom’s daily operation can depend on formal roles and recurring adjustments about time, resources and responsibility.

Study who can propose, refuse or enforce an arrangement. A negotiation can be shaped by unequal authority even when participants actively interpret the situation.

Routine and innovation

Joint action often draws on settled procedures. A problem can make those procedures visible and open them to revision. Trace continuity alongside change to explain how an institution is reproduced through everyday activity.

Participants can coordinate while retaining different evaluations. An editor and reporter may disagree about a headline yet agree on a procedure for checking the evidence and reaching a decision. Examine the working agreement, the authority behind it and the interpretations that remain unsettled.

Media practices organise how people appear, receive recognition and respond.

Symbolic interactionism gives media research a way to examine participants’ meanings and identities in use. A journalist becomes recognisable as a professional through interactions with editors, sources, colleagues and audiences, as well as through credentials and institutional positions.

Goffman’s dramaturgical approach

Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, published in its familiar United States edition in 1959, uses performance to analyse the organisation of encounters. It offers a related vocabulary for studying roles, audiences and impression management.

Front regions support a performance before an audience. Back regions permit preparation or conduct separated from that audience. A recording studio and a production meeting can organise these regions differently for different participants.

A presenter can sincerely aim to inform while arranging an introduction, dress, tone and background. Self-presentation is part of making a role intelligible and sustaining an encounter.

Imagined audiences and context collapse

Marwick and boyd examine how social-media users imagine their audiences. Context collapse brings audiences associated with different relationships into overlapping communication settings.

Suppose a student posts a joke for classmates and later encounters a response from a prospective employer. The changed audience can prompt a new interpretation of the post and of the person who posted it.

Performances and exhibitions

Hogan distinguishes synchronous performances from asynchronous exhibitions of material that can be stored, arranged and recirculated. A live exchange unfolds through immediate responses; a collection of posts can be encountered later and in a different order.

Investigate how this changes the work of presentation. A profile, archived clip or screenshot can continue to participate in others’ judgements beyond the original encounter.

Platform conditions enter interpretation

When a service displays a read receipt, reaction count or visible audience list, participants can treat that feature as a cue about attention and recognition. Its meaning develops through use: a silence may be read as disapproval, busyness or uncertainty.

Study the feature and the interpretation together. Record what the interface shows, what the participant believes it means and how a subsequent exchange changes that belief. This connects technical conditions with the interactionist account of situated meaning.

Labels, stigma and responses

Becker’s work on labelling asks how rules are made and applied and how people become classified. Goffman’s Stigma examines discredited identities and their management within social relationships.

For media research, follow a label’s application, circulation and consequences. Ask who can attach it, how others respond and how the person accepts, contests or redirects it. A public label can affect opportunities while leaving room for varied responses.

Connect interpreted action with the conditions in which people act.

Symbolic interactionism illuminates how people make situations intelligible and coordinate conduct. It also supplies questions about authority, identity and the repeated practices through which institutions operate.

What the perspective contributes

• Participants’ meanings enter the explanation. A gesture’s significance is investigated through its use and consequences.
• The self becomes a social process. Recognition, anticipation and reflection connect identity with communication.
• Interaction is followed as it unfolds. Misunderstanding, clarification and adjustment become visible.
• Routine and change can be studied together. People reproduce conventions and sometimes revise them through action.

Structure enters the encounter

A lecturer, student, editor and freelancer possess different permissions and resources. An interpretation becomes consequential partly through the person’s ability to have it recognised or enforced.

Examine contracts, organisational procedures, status distinctions and access to communication. A student may understand a message differently while still depending on someone else’s approval.

Structural identity approaches

Stryker connects identities with social positions, commitments and the likelihood that a role identity will be invoked across situations. Stryker and Burke’s synthesis and Burke and Stets’s identity theory develop related questions about identities and their operation.

Identity salience concerns readiness to invoke an identity across situations. Identity verification concerns processes through which perceived meanings of the self are brought into relation with an identity standard.

A student who identifies strongly as an accurate reporter may seek assignments, respond to corrections and interpret feedback through that identity. The relevant study would specify and measure these relationships.

Questions that strengthen an analysis

Evidence: compare what participants say with observed sequences, documents and contrasting accounts. Interviews are themselves interactions in which meanings are presented and negotiated.

Power: ask whose definition becomes official, whose account is dismissed and which resources sustain that difference.

Scale and history: trace how established categories, past disputes and wider institutions enter the situation. Comparative and historical work can extend a close study of encounters.

Scope: identify the cases through which the explanation travels and the settings in which it needs revision. Concepts become stronger through their encounter with evidence.

Follow the interpretation, the response and the consequences.

For each case, reconstruct what participants understand, how they anticipate one another and what they do next. Then identify evidence that could support or revise your account.

Case 1 · The reaction that becomes approval

Suppose the class representative treats a lecturer’s thumbs-up as approval of the programme. A room request follows. Another student asks whether the schedule is final. The lecturer explains that the reaction acknowledged receipt, and the group introduces the phrase “approved for circulation” for final decisions.

Your task: apply Blumer’s three premises and explain the change in joint action.

Case 2 · A creator imagines the audience

Suppose a student publishes a first interview. Several friends react positively, but a teacher comments on an unanswered follow-up question. The student feels embarrassed, revises the next interview and later receives a message from the guest praising the revision. The video is also shared in a professional group.

Your task: connect the looking-glass self, role-taking and the imagined audience. Identify how the weight of feedback varies.

Case 3 · A contributor is labelled unreliable

Suppose a campus publication describes a contributor as unreliable after two missed deadlines. Editors begin assigning that person simpler work. The contributor explains that access to a shared computer caused delays, proposes a different submission arrangement and completes later assignments on time. Some editors revise their judgement; others continue using the earlier label.

Your task: analyse definition, labelling, identity and unequal authority while including material circumstances.

Listen for the connections among meaning, self and action.

Watch my lecture on Symbolic Interactionism, then return to the class-group example. Trace how a symbol is understood, how participants anticipate others and how a clarification changes the activity.

Watch my Symbolic Interactionism lecture on YouTube ↗

A three-pass viewing exercise

1. First pass: explain why the meaning of a gesture matters to the action that follows.
2. Second pass: connect role-taking and self-reflection with one communication decision.
3. Third pass: reconstruct how participants revise a definition of a situation.

Finish by describing a short sequence: an expression, an interpretation, an action and a response. Identify which part would require further evidence.

Ten questions to test concepts through their application.

Choose an answer before opening its explanation. Then supply a different example that illustrates the same concept.

Enter the participants’ world and make the interpretation assessable.

Begin with an interaction you can study closely: a production meeting, interview, teaching exchange, moderation dispute or message clarification. Ask how participants recognise the situation and organise their next actions.

Activity 1 · Follow a symbol in use

1. Select a word, gesture, badge, reaction or other expression used within an accessible setting.
2. Observe at least three occasions on which it is used and record the surrounding exchange.
3. Ask participants what they understood and how they learned that use.
4. Compare meanings, anticipated responses and subsequent actions.
5. Identify a disagreement, correction or change in use.
6. Write 400–500 words applying Blumer’s premises and supporting the account with evidence.

Activity 2 · Compare self-descriptions across settings

Kuhn and McPartland’s Twenty Statements Test (1954) offers a classic way of investigating self-attitudes through responses to “Who am I?” Privately write twenty self-descriptions, then consider which would become relevant in a classroom, a family gathering and a professional interview.

Choose what to share. Discuss how roles, relationships, personal qualities and aspirations appear in the descriptions. A comparison across occasions can examine how context and identity are connected.

A practical research workflow

Use concepts to guide discovery

Blumer’s sensitising concepts suggest where to look while remaining open to what the empirical case reveals. “Role-taking” can direct attention towards anticipation; a study must still establish how that anticipation works in the encounter.

Write analytical memos that separate observation, participant interpretation and researcher inference. Compare occasions when the expected pattern appears with occasions when it changes or fails to appear.

Methodological variety

Ethnography and interviews can illuminate participants’ meanings and practices. Self-description measures, surveys and hypothesis testing also appear within the wider tradition. Kuhn’s work and structural identity theory show routes beyond a single methodological style.

Charmaz develops constructivist grounded theory through iterative data collection, coding and theoretical interpretation. Clarke’s situational analysis extends inquiry through maps of situations, social worlds and positions. Explain which approach fits the question and how its procedures are used.

Study interaction responsibly

Obtain appropriate consent for observation or use of private communication. Remove identifying details where needed, especially when quoting searchable online material. Record how access and the researcher’s own position affect what becomes visible.

Participants may offer different accounts, and an interview can become an occasion to justify or reinterpret an earlier act. Treat this as evidence about meaning-making while also reconstructing the earlier sequence through other materials.

Examination prompts

• Short answer: explain significant symbol, role-taking, self and generalised other with examples.
• Conceptual answer: connect Blumer’s three premises with Mead’s account of mind and self.
• Applied essay: analyse a media encounter using interpretation, self-presentation and joint action.
• Critical essay: assess the perspective’s contribution to understanding agency, power, institutions and mediated identity.

A developed answer explains selected concepts precisely, follows a concrete interaction and evaluates how the evidence connects meaning with conduct.

Keep the concepts close to the social worlds they help explain.

Use the glossary to reconnect each term with an encounter, a participant’s meaning and a line of action. Begin further reading with Mead, Blumer and Cooley, then follow identity, media or methodological developments that fit your question.

Glossary

Symbolic interactionism

A perspective examining meaning, self and action through social interaction and interpretation.

Pragmatism

A philosophical orientation connecting ideas with action, experience, problems and consequences.

Meaning

The significance something has for participants as they interpret and act towards it.

Symbol

An expression or object used to signify something through socially learned practices.

Gesture

A phase or expression within activity that can call out a response from another.

Significant symbol

A gesture through which its user can evoke a corresponding attitude to the response it calls out in others.

Language

A socially learned system of symbols supporting communication, anticipation and reflection.

Social object

A person or social position treated as an object of attention, with meaning formed in interaction.

Interpretation

The handling and revision of meaning as a person deals with a situation.

Self-interaction

Indicating things to oneself and considering their significance in organising action.

Mind

In Mead’s account, a social process involving significant symbols and the consideration of responses.

Self

The socially developed capacity to take oneself as an object and act towards oneself.

Reflexivity

The capacity to consider one’s conduct, position or understanding and respond to that consideration.

Role-taking

Considering a situation through the attitude or position of another.

The “I”

The response to social attitudes within the ongoing process of the self.

The “Me”

The organised attitudes of others taken towards oneself.

Particular other

A specific person whose attitude or response enters an encounter or an anticipated exchange.

Generalised other

The organised social standpoint of a community or activity through which conduct is viewed and regulated.

Socialisation

Learning meanings, roles and practices through participation with others.

Play

Role-taking involving the attitude of a particular other within an imagined activity.

Game

An organised activity requiring coordination of several interdependent positions and shared rules.

Definition of the situation

An account of what is happening and what conduct is appropriate within it.

Thomas theorem

The proposition that definitions of situations can produce real consequences through action.

Social action

Conduct oriented towards other people and their anticipated responses.

Social interaction

Reciprocal interpretation and adjustment among participants.

Social act

An organised activity within which gestures and responses have their significance.

Joint action

The fitting together of participants’ lines of action into a shared social activity.

Negotiated order

Social order sustained partly through agreements and adjustments within wider conditions.

Looking-glass self

Self-formation involving imagined appearance, imagined judgement and resulting self-feeling.

Self-feeling

A feeling about oneself arising within relations and interpreted evaluations.

Identity

Meanings through which a person understands or is recognised as a particular kind of person.

Role identity

Self-meanings associated with a recognised social position.

Identity salience

In structural identity theory, the likelihood or readiness of invoking an identity across situations.

Identity verification

Processes relating perceived self-meanings in a situation to an identity standard.

Self-presentation

The organisation of conduct and expression through which one appears before others.

Impression management

Practices through which impressions of a person or performance are sustained or adjusted.

Front region

A setting or region organised for a performance before a particular audience.

Back region

A region separated from that audience where preparation or other conduct can occur.

Imagined audience

The audience a communicator anticipates when producing an expression.

Context collapse

The overlap of audiences and expectations associated with different social contexts.

Labelling

The application and social use of a category through which a person or conduct is defined.

Stigma

A discrediting relation between an attributed characteristic or identity and social expectations.

Sensitising concept

A concept that guides attention towards relevant features while remaining open to empirical refinement.

References and further reading

1. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (C. W. Morris, Ed.). University of Chicago Press. Read / view source ↗The foundational posthumous collection on significant symbols, role-taking, the self and social organisation.
2. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Prentice-Hall. Read / view source ↗The three premises, joint action and methodological perspective. The linked publisher record is the 1986 reissue.
3. Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human Nature and the Social Order. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Read / view source ↗The looking-glass self. The linked chapter presents the revised 1922 text.
4. Thomas, W. I., & Thomas, D. S. (1928). The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs. Alfred A. Knopf. Read / view source ↗The linked methodological chapter develops the importance and consequences of definitions of situations.
5. Mead, G. H. (1913). The social self. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 10, 374–380. Read / view source ↗An early statement on self-reflection, inner conversation and the social formation of self.
6. Blumer, H. (1966). Sociological implications of the thought of George Herbert Mead. American Journal of Sociology, 71(5), 535–544. Read / view source ↗Develops the implications of Mead’s thought for social action, interpretation and organisation.
7. Blumer, H. (1954). What is wrong with social theory? American Sociological Review, 19(1), 3–10. Read / view source ↗A methodological argument that includes the distinction between definitive and sensitising concepts.
8. Kuhn, M. H., & McPartland, T. S. (1954). An empirical investigation of self-attitudes. American Sociological Review, 19(1), 68–76. Read / view source ↗Introduces an influential empirical approach to self-attitudes through the Twenty Statements Test.
9. Stryker, S. (1968). Identity salience and role performance: The relevance of symbolic interaction theory for family research. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 30(4), 558–564. Read / view source ↗Connects identity salience, commitment, role performance and researchable hypotheses.
10. Stryker, S., & Burke, P. J. (2000). The past, present, and future of an identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(4), 284–297. Read / view source ↗Synthesises related structural and process-oriented developments in identity theory.
11. Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2009). Identity Theory. Oxford University Press. Read / view source ↗Develops the operation of identities, verification, multiple identities and connections with social structure.
12. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday. Read / view source ↗The United States edition of the dramaturgical account of performances, audiences and regions.
13. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Prentice-Hall. Read / view source ↗Examines discredited identities and their management. The publisher links a later reissue.
14. Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press. Read / view source ↗A foundational account of rule-making, labelling and the social organisation of deviance.
15. Strauss, A. L. (1978). Negotiations: Varieties, Contexts, Processes, and Social Order. Jossey-Bass. Read / view source ↗A book-length investigation of negotiation, working arrangements and their contexts.
16. Charmaz, K. (2024). Constructing Grounded Theory (3rd ed.). SAGE. Read / view source ↗A methodological route through data collection, coding, interpretation and constructivist grounded theory.
17. Clarke, A. E. (2005). Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Postmodern Turn. SAGE. Read / view source ↗Extends qualitative inquiry through maps of situations, social worlds and positions.
18. Marwick, A. E., & boyd, d. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13(1), 114–133. Read / view source ↗Examines imagined audiences and the management of overlapping social contexts.
19. Hogan, B. (2010). The presentation of self in the age of social media: Distinguishing performances and exhibitions online. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 30(6), 377–386. Read / view source ↗Develops the distinction between synchronous performances and curated asynchronous exhibitions.
20. boyd, d. (2014). It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. Yale University Press. Read / view source ↗A fieldwork-based account of identity, audiences and participation in networked settings.

Six ideas to retain

1. Begin with meaning in use. Ask what an expression or object signifies to the participants.
2. Trace its social history. Investigate how the meaning was learned and how it is maintained.
3. Follow interpretation. Compare what people notice, anticipate and revise.
4. Study the developing self. Connect role-taking, recognition and reflection with conduct.
5. Explain coordination. Show how participants fit their actions together within particular conditions.
6. Keep the account open to evidence. Examine disagreement, unequal authority and alternative interpretations.