The Oxford Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism

The Oxford Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism features a diverse array of cutting-edge scholarship in symbolic interactionism (SI). Contributors present original research in various established and emerging areas of concern while outlining key theoretical and methodological foundations of this multifaceted and broadly relevant perspective in the field of sociology. The scholars featured in this volume present new and evolving outlooks on foundational SI themes including the self and identity, the interactive construction of meaning, classical pragmatism, interactionist research methods, performance, culture and subcultures, cognition, emotion, organizations and institutions, and social constructionism. Contributors merge these and other traditional concepts and perspectives of symbolic interactionism with a range of other influences to bring SI to bear on various developing areas of research, and to address a variety of new and interesting questions, problems, and issues. These include issues pertaining to race and racism, gender, sex and sexuality, power, digital technologies and computer-mediated interaction, crime, health and illness, and environmental concerns.

Presenting an expansive and forward-looking take on symbolic interactionism while providing readers with valuable tools with which to conduct their own research, this handbook addresses important developments that are reshaping the field. The handbook is organized into four parts: (I) theoretical and methodological orientations; (II) culture, context, and symbolic interaction; (III) power and inequalities; and (IV) environment, disasters, and risk. In each part, contributors demonstrate the timely and unique contributions of symbolic interactionism to our understanding of important issues and social problems in the contemporary world.

Wayne H. Brekhus is Chair and Professor of Sociology at the University of Missouri. His research interests include the sociology of identities, the cultural sociology of cognition, social markedness and unmarkedness, and developing sociological theory to analyze constructions of social difference. He is the author of The Sociology of Identity: Authenticity, Multidimensionality, and Mobility; Culture and Cognition: Patterns in the Social Construction of Reality; Sociologia dell'inavvertito (translated into Italian by Lorenzo Sabetta), and Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity, and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Sociology (with Gabe Ignatow).

Thomas DeGloma is Associate Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He specializes in the areas of culture, cognition, memory, symbolic interaction, and sociological theory. His research interests also include the sociology of time, knowledge, autobiography, identity, and trauma. He is the author of Anonymous: The Performance and Impact of Hidden Identities and Seeing the Light: The Social Logic of Personal Discovery, which received the 2015 Charles Horton Cooley Book Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. He is also co-editor of the Interpretive Lenses in Sociology series. DeGloma served as President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in 2017-2018.

William Ryan Force is a student of social life and Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Fresno. His research and teaching explore the accomplishment of identity at the intersection of language, power, and culture. He has studied a variety of empirical contexts: tattoo culture, punk/indie rock, transgressive TV, bar culture, trick-or-treating, and the supernatural. Dr. Force's work has appeared as book chapters and in journals including Deviant Behavior, Symbolic Interaction, and Crime, Media, Culture. His current projects include a book examining the influence of social media on the tattoo subculture, and a critical interactionist analysis of the relationship between gangsta rap and outlaw country music.

Acknowledgments

About the Editors

Contributors

1. Introduction: On the Wonderful Complexities and Varied Directions of Symbolic Interactionism in the Twenty-first Century
Wayne H. Brekhus, Thomas DeGloma, and William Ryan Force

Part I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations

2. The Historical Foundations of Symbolic Interactionism
Robert Dingwall

3. Symbolic Interactionism and Social Research
Andrea Salvini

4. Toward a Concept-Driven Sociology: Sensitizing Concepts and the Prepared Mind
Eviatar Zerubavel

5. De-realization and Infra-humanization: A Theory of Symbolic Interaction with Digital Technologies
Simon Gottschalk and Celene Fuller

6. Quantitative Measurement and the Production of Meaning
Héctor Vera

7. Social Organization, Macro Phenomena, and Symbolic Interactionism
Patrick J. W. McGinty

8. Dramaturgical Traditions: Performance and Interaction
Susie Scott

9. Social Constructionism in the Symbolic Interactionist Tradition
Ara A. Francis

10. The Narrative Study of Self and Society
Amir B. Marvasti and Jaber F. Gubrium

Part II: Culture, Context, and Symbolic Interaction

11. Culture, or the Meaning of Meaning Making
Michael Ian Borer

12. Subcultures
William Ryan Force

13. Interactionist Theories of Emotion: From G. H. Mead to Culture Theory
E. Doyle McCarthy

14. Shopping, Identity, and Place
Enrico Campo

15. Symbolic Interaction and Music
Joseph A. Kotarba

16. Sociology of Mass and New Media through an Interactionist Lens
Julie B. Wiest

17. The Presence, Performance, and Publics of Online Interactions
Qian Li and Xiaoli Tian

18. Symbolic Interactionism and Religion
Andrea Salvini and Irene Psaroudakis

Part III: Power and Inequalities

19. Markedness and Unmarkedness in Identities and Social Interaction
Wayne H. Brekhus

20. The Appearance of Nothingness: Concealed Strategic Actions
Carmelo Lombardo and Lorenzo Sabetta

21. Power and Interaction
Michael L. Schwalbe and Kelsey Mischke

22. Racial Socialization and Racism
Margaret A. Hagerman

23. Gender and Embodiment as Negotiated Relations
S. L. Crawley and Ashley Green

24. Sex and Sexuality
Cirus Rinaldi

25. Deviant Selves, Transgressive Acts, and Moral Narratives: The Symbolic-Interactionist Field of Transgression, Crime, and Justice
Thaddeus Müller

26. Medicine, Health, and Illness
Giuseppina Cersosimo

Part IV: Environment, Disasters, and Risk

27. Interactionist Tools for Assessing Community Resilience
Braden Leap

28. Eco-uncertainty as a Frame and Way of Life
Daina Cheyenne Harvey

29. Disasters
Margarethe Kusenbach and Gabriela Christmann

Index