• Is a mordenist Approach
• Analyses how people interact with each other
• Is  a bottom up theory which focuses on how  an individual  creates the society rather than the society creates the individual
• Looking at everyday routines and actions of people

Symbolic Interactionalism :

MEAD AND BLUMER

•  Came from Mead and Blumer
• They look how people create society through  day- to day  routine actions
• Symbolic Intercationalism has 3 core ideas
• the Symbol
• the Self
• The Interacation

•  Things within the society is grouped into categories  which then give names to 

eg. trees, pen, table , clothes etc

• The world has a lot of symbols which different meanings for everyone  this will lead to different directions

•  We need to know how we are through the eyes of others  in order to know how we should behave

 The self and symbol come together whicg creates the Intercation

 It is only  possible to interact with people only if you know what they are thinking about the situation

Everyone must be  invloved in reading the symbol and self correctly  to avoid confusion

• He wanted to know the impotance behind meaning and behaviour
•  He says that action is meaningful
•  He suggests that we do things in life to achieve something  e.g we go sixthform to pass A-levels
•  he disagrees with the functionnalist view about exterbal forces controlling us
•  he claims that your actions depend on how an individual interpret the world which will shape thier life

• Means empathetic understanding
•  empathic understanding :   this means   that an individual would have an image of how the world would look like from social  factors.

•  They prefer  qualitative methods  which helps them look at the meaning behind people's actions
• e.g. through interviews or social events  such as the reaction to the death of princess Diana
• Weber wanted to look at the origins of  moden capitalism

• helps to understand  meanings and  socal  interation
•  individuals are not seen as puppets or controlled like sructuralists do

1.  It does not look at things which control us .e.g.  The idelogical apparatus
2.  fails to look at the social instituations which help to keep social order