System, Group, and Power: Chapter One, Text Eleven

Symbolic Interactionism


1. Behavior depends on a named or classified world. The names or kind of terms assigned to aspects of the environment, both physical and social, impose their meaning through shared behavioral expectations which emerge from social interaction. By interacting with others, one learns to classify objects with which one comes into contact as well as the expectations regarding how one should act toward them.

2. Among the kinds of terms learned in interaction, one finds symbols used to designate “positions," which are the relatively stable morphological components of the social structure. These positions are what give rise to shared behavioral expectations conventionally called “roles.”

3. People who act according to organized forms of conduct, in other words, at the center of a social structure, define each other, mutually recognizing each other as the occupants of positions. Through mutual definition, they appeal to the expectations of one or another’s behavior.

4. People who act according to organized conduct also define themselves. These reflexive positional designations, which become part of the “I,” generate internalized expectations regarding one’s own conduct.

5. By entering into situations of interaction, people define the situation, describing it as well as the other participants, themselves, and unique aspects of the situation, and they utilize the resulting definitions to organize their own conduct for that situation.

6. Nevertheless, social conduct is not produced by those definitions, even when the initial definitions can limit possibilities from which other, alternative definitions can emerge in interaction. Behavior is the product of the process of shaping a role, which begins with the expectations activated in the process of defining situations, but which are developed through a tentative and sometimes subtle exchange between the actors who can modify the form and content of interaction.

7. The extent to which the roles are “constructed” more than “executed” and what constitutive elements enter into the construction of roles depend on the larger social structures in which the interactive situations occur. Some structures are “open” and others relatively “closed” with respect to innovation in roles and their fulfillment. Each structure imposes some limits on the kind of definitions which can be applied, and thus on the possibilities of interaction.

8. As long as roles are elaborated and not simply executed, changes in the character of the definitions can be produced, in the names and kinds of terms utilized in those definitions and in the possibilities of interaction; in turn, those changes can drive changes in the larger social structures in which interactions take place.


Stryker, 1980, p. 53-55.