Another examination might study the different functions that occur in food production: from farming and harvesting to flashy packaging and mass consumerism.Ī conflict theorist might be interested in the power differentials present in the regulation of food, by exploring where people’s right to information intersects with corporations’ drive for profit and how the government mediates those interests. Any of these factors might become a topic of sociological study.Ī structural-functional approach to the topic of food consumption might be interested in the role of the agriculture industry within the nation’s economy and how this has changed from the early days of manual-labor farming to modern mechanized production. In the context of society, our nation’s food system is at the core of numerous social movements, political issues, and economic debates. Eating can be an individual or a group action, and eating habits and customs are influenced by our cultures. The consumption of food is a commonplace, daily occurrence, yet it can also be associated with important moments in our lives. In contrast, many Eastern societies would consider it much more appropriate to keep the wallet and search for the owner yourself turning it over to someone else, even the authorities, would be considered deviant behavior.įarming and Locavores: How Sociological Perspectives Might View Food Consumption In the United States, turning the wallet in to local authorities would be considered the appropriate action, and to keep the wallet would be seen as deviant. One situation that illustrates this is what you believe you’re to do if you find a wallet in the street. There is no absolute definition of deviance, and different societies have constructed different meanings for deviance, as well as associating different behaviors with deviance. This approach is often used to understand what’s defined as deviant within a society. We develop social constructs based on interactions with others, and those constructs that last over time are those that have meanings which are widely agreed-upon or generally accepted by most within the society. Constructivism is an extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be. Goffman used theater as an analogy for social interaction and recognized that people’s interactions showed patterns of cultural “scripts.” Because it can be unclear what part a person may play in a given situation, he or she has to improvise his or her role as the situation unfolds (Goffman 1958).Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective are more likely to use qualitative research methods, such as in-depth interviews or participant observation, because they seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which research subjects live. The focus on the importance of symbols in building a society led sociologists like Erving Goffman (1922–1982) to develop a technique called dramaturgical analysis. For example, while a conflict theorist studying a political protest might focus on class difference, a symbolic interactionist would be more interested in how individuals in the protesting group interact, as well as the signs and symbols protesters use to communicate their message. Their studies often involve observation of one-on-one interactions. Social scientists who apply symbolic-interactionist thinking look for patterns of interaction between individuals. Janitors are shown protesting in Santa Monica. If you love books, for example, a symbolic interactionist might propose that you learned that books are good or important in the interactions you had with family, friends, school, or church maybe your family had a special reading time each week, getting your library card was treated as a special event, or bedtime stories were associated with warmth and comfort. Mead’s student, Herbert Blumer, coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and outlined these basic premises: humans interact with things based on meanings ascribed to those things the ascribed meaning of things comes from our interactions with others and society the meanings of things are interpreted by a person when dealing with things in specific circumstances (Blumer 1969). George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is considered a founder of symbolic interactionism though he never published his work on it (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993). Theorists Herman and Reynolds (1994) note that this perspective sees people as being active in shaping the social world rather than simply being acted upon. Communication-the exchange of meaning through language and symbols-is believed to be the way in which people make sense of their social worlds. Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society. 18 Reading: Symbolic Interactionist Theory Sociological Paradigm #3: Symbolic Interactionist Theory
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