Introductions - Symbolic Interactionism

Question 1

Symbolic Interactionism

Answer 1

• Society = product of everyday interactions w ppl, environments, etc.
• The key to understanding symbolic interactionism in the most basic sense is that society is the product of everyday interactions of individuals
• Inspired off the work of Max Weber
• Goal of soci is to develop interpretive understanding
• Indivs attach meaning to social experiences

Question 2

The goal of this paradigm

Answer 2

• To understand how individuals socially construct their realities, which therefore, influence behaviour (how ppl determine what is socially sleep accepted or subjectively considered aspect of health)
• Challenges the “taken for granted” aspects of reality
• Medical knowledge is know universal and changes constantly
• Implores us to challenge what we assume to be natural & self-evident
• Negates power structure
• Acknowledges diff. cultural contexts, but not power influence/hierarchies influences
• Does not cover how symbols are interpreted differently by diff. groups (cultural differences)

Question 3

Social construction/ Constructionism

Answer 3

• Refers to the socially created characteristics of human life based on the idea actively construct reality
• Ppl construct their reality -> nothing is normal or abnormal, right or wrong, set in stone
• Under this perspective health and illness is understood as social constructions that change over time and vary between cultures (what we consider on illness is defined & passed through a social lens that reflects the culture, politics & morality of that particular society at that point of time

Question 4

Labelling theory

Answer 4

• Key concept
• Labelling theory examines the impact of social institutions and professions have in defining and socially constructing behaviours and activities as deviant

Question 5

Erving Goffman

Answer 5

• Canadian born sociologist
• Examined stigma and paid special attention what he termed as total institutions in his book Asylums (1961)
• For Goffman, stigmatization occurs when a person possess an attribute that negatively affects social interaction. He defined three forms of stigma

Question 6

Asylums

Answer 6

• Total institutions is a term that refers to institutions in which life is highly regulated and subjected to authoritarian control to induce social conformity
• Asylums (1961) examined the ways in which ‘deviant’ individuals were institutionalized as a form of treatment. He found:
  a) overt and covert dynamics between inmates & staff
  b) Authoritaisn mechanisms for conformity, which resulted in adverse health outcomes
  c) How individuals kepy on “underlife” - keeping a sense of self - as a form of resistance

Question 7

Three forms of stigma

Answer 7

1) Physical deformity
2) Individual characteristics (ex. Mental Disorders)
3) “Tribal” factors (race, ethnicity & religion based)
- results in tainted/spoiled identity & comes back to negatively affect social interactions
- Ableist architectural structures
- Attribute becomes person’s identity

Question 8

Three ways to distinguish Symbolic Interactionism

Answer 8

1) Sociology is a science, the purpose of which to understand ‘social meanings of human social action & interaction’
2) Reflectivity, or intersubjectivity, rather than objectivity or critical analysis, characterizes the relationship between the subject & researcher
3) Rich, carefully detailed descriptions & analysis of unique social situations from the perspective of the subjects under investigation are typical

Question 9

Having Epilepsy (Schneider and Conrad, 1983)

Answer 9

• Based on long, semi-structured interviews with people who have been diagnosed with epilepsy
• Argued that sociology helps differentiate between disease and illness
• Highlights the importance of examining how individuals live day to day with a disease; found that one of the more pervasive experiences of epilepsy was the constant sense of uncertainty

Question 10

Disease vs Illness

Answer 10

Disease being pathology of human body (unwanted changes in the body) vs illness being the experience associated with a given pathology (social meanings, experiences & relationships in relation to said disease)

Question 11

Uncertainty

Answer 11

Uncertainty became one of the defining characteristics of the disease & later for other chronic conditions, as epileptic patients are not constantly symptomatic