User:K.armagost.015/Interactionism

In sociology, interactionism is a theoretical perspective that derives social processes (such as conflict, cooperation, identity formation) from human interaction. It is the study of how individuals shape society and are shaped by society through meaning that arises in interactions. George Herbert Mead, as an advocate of pragmatism and the subjectivity of social reality, is considered a leader in the development of interactionism. However, "interactionism" from a sociological perspective tends to actually be a shorthand for "symbolic interactionism.” Herbert Blumer expanded on Mead's work and coined the term "symbolic interactionism”. Which is defined as being “a leading American theory that focuses upon the ways in which meanings emerge through interaction.

Subdivisions
The Interactionist perspective is split into several subdivisions:

Phenomenology
Phenomenology, is a philosophical method of inquiry developed by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl It involves the systematic investigation of consciousness. It has been debated that consciousness is the only phenomenon which is known to be certain, and it is assumed that our experience of the world, including everything from our perception of objects through to our knowledge of mathematical formulae, is constituted in and by consciousness. To trace this process of constitution, we have to disregard what we know about the world, and address the question of how, or by what processes, that knowledge comes into being. This strategy is known as bracketing or phenomenological reduction.

Verstehen
Verstehen, means "understanding."or "to understand" ,in sociology it is viewed as another method in the umbrella of interpretive sociology. "Interpretive sociology is a term usually confined to those sociological approaches that regard meaning and action as the prime objects of sociology. The term was introduced by German sociologist Max Weber, in the late 19th century and was used in both English and German social sciences. For Weber, Verstehen or the understanding of people's actions, is the method par excellence of sociology.

Social Action
Social action, is an action theory developed in Weberian sociology. Action theories are those that start from or see the major object for sociology as human action. A defining quality of action is that, unlike behaviour, it carries a subjective meaning for the actor. These approaches, therefore, concern themselves with the meaning of action and its interpretation. Max Weber defines "an Action [as] 'social' if the acting individual takes [into] account the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course".

Ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology, is a sociological approach that formed following the breakdown of the "Orthodox Consensus" in the mid-1960s. The term ethnomethodology was coined by American sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Garfinkel's foundations for the approach were lain as a theory and as a self-conscious critique of all conventional sociology. It is the study of how social order is produced in and through processes of social interaction. It generally seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream sociological approaches.

Symbolic Interactionism
The core principles of Symbolic interactionism are: meaning, language, and thought. Meaning being what the observer understands to be meaningful or of value to the situation at hand. the principle of language refers to the means with which humans negotiate meaning, or the way with which the two parties in the dialogue choose to communicate. The third principle, is the internal dialogue within oneself where we need to be able to think in order to understand and interpret the meaning of a message.

Social Constructionism
Social constructionism  Social constructionism is the thorough cultivation of sociological regard for all aspects of the human condition and for the many forms of knowledge that have emerged concerning them (including, of course, those produced by social scientists themselves).