Interactionism in Sociology: Theoretical Basis and Methodological Implications 9789814377577

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
I: STREAMS OF INTERACTIONIST THEORISING
II: SHARED CONCEPTS AND THEORETICAL CONVERGENCE
III: SOME DEMARCATIONS
IV: CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY

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I5EA5 The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies was established as an autonomous organization in May 1968. It is a regional research centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern Southeast Asia. The Institute's research interest is focused on the many-faceted problems of development and modernization, and political and social change in Southeast Asia. The Institute is governed by a twenty-four member Board of Trustees on which are represented the National University of Singapore, appointees from the government, as well as representatives from a broad range of professional and civic organizations and groups. A ten-man Executive Committee oversees day-to-day operations; it is chaired by the Director, the Institute's chief academic and administrative officer.

The responsibility for facts and opinions expressed in this publication rests exclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the Institute or its supporters.

"Copyright subsists in this publication under the United Kingdom Copyright Act, 1911, and the Singapore Copyright Act (Cap. 187). No person shall reproduce a copy of this publication, or extracts therefrom, without the written permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore."

INTERACTIONISM IN SOCIOLOGY: THEORETICAL BASIS AND METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

by

Joachim Matthes

Research Notes and Discussions Paper No. 29 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 1982

CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION

1

I:

3

II:

III:

IV:

STREAMS OF INTERACTIONIST THEORISING Symbolic Interactionism

3

Phenomenological Sociology

4

E thnomethodology

7

The 'New' Sociology of Knowledge

10

SHARED CONCEPTS AND THEORETICAL CONVERGENCE

13

Intersubjectivity

13

Symbolic Structure of Interaction

13

Everyday-life

14

Knowledge

Structures

14

Indexicality and Theory Construction

16

Methodological Implications

17

The Narrative Interview: An Example of Interactionist Methodology

19

SOME DEMARCATIONS

25

Action Theory and Behaviourism

25

Functionalism and Systems Theory

26

Marxism

27

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

28 30

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A short German verswn of this paper was first written m 1976 for semmar purposes at the Department of Sociology of Bielefeld University. When I came to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, in 1981, Sharon Siddique, Research Officer at the Institute, encouraged me to write an enlarged and revised English version of this paper, to be used as a basic orientation paper for our project on religious change and modernization in Singapore as well as a discussion paper on recent developments in sociological theory and methodology. I am greatly indebted to Sharon Siddique for having spent innumerable hours going through the first draft of this paper, critically commenting on it and eliminating the Germanic structure of my English, at the same time attempting to preserve my meaning. This exhausting business was in itself a preliminary exercise in language analysis and in interpreting text material. I am grateful to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies for all the facilities provided and for accepting this paper for publication. I also want to thank Stiftung Volkswagenwerk for providing a grant for the research project within the context of which this paper has been written and will be used. Joachim Matthes

INTRODUCTION

For several decades, sociology has been dominated by the mainly Anglo-American traditions of behaviourism, functionalism and systems theory. Though other theoretical and methodological orientations were pursued here and there, they remained latent and recessive. Due to the world-wide influence of AngloAmerican social sciences, mediated through the widespread use of the English language, the institutional remnants of British colonialism and the more recent impact of American cultural colonialism, a certain theoretical and methodological paradigm has been taken for decades to be the form and shape of sociology. Differing paradigmatic approaches have been either suppressed by all possible means of policy-making in academic life and research promotion, or defined as 'non-sociological' in a 'stricter sense', placing them in the spheres of social philosophy, social psychology, or even outside the social sciences. Since the end of the Second World War, even the manifold and highly differentiated theoretical and methodological traditions of the Continental European social sciences have suffered badly from this development. In the so-called Third World, the Anglo-American tradition of behaviourism, functionalism and systems theory seems to have been accepted sometimes even more uncritically than in the U.S. and Britain themselves. Recently the situation has begun to change. Criticisms of this tradition have become stronger and more outspoken -- first in Europe, later in some parts of the Third World (see Alatas, 1974), particularly in Latin America, and also among non-mainstream sociologists in the U.S., particularly in California {the 'West Coast Approach'). 5-·Jme Marxists were the first to claim their independent role within the social sciences. They maintained that through their approach they could achieve access to certain dimensions of society and social life which were not accessible through the theoretical perspectives of behaviourist and functionalist approaches and their accompanying methodologies. Since the end of the sixties, we observe moreover a remarkable revival of theoretical and methodological orientations in sociology. These orientations, which have different traditions in different Western societies, are now developing some kind of paradigmatic convergence under the general designation of 'interactionism'. 1 There are four main sources of this recent development: 1

A detailed and very instructive analysis of the history of interactionist streams of thinking has been presented by Anselm L. Strauss and Berenic M. Fisher {1980).

2

1.

symbolz"c interactionism as founded by G.H. Mead in the thirties;

2.

phenomenological sociology, mainly represented by the writings of Alfred Schuetz;

3.

ethnomethodology as founded by Harold Garfinkel in the sixties;

4.

the revival and reshaping of the socz"ology of knowledge under the influence of language analysis and socio-linguistic studies, beginning with the publication of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann's book The Social Construction of Realz"ty in the sixties.

These four streams of sociological thinking will be sketched in Section I. The convergent theoretical patterns and methodological implications of 'interactionism' flowing from them will then be outlined briefly in Section II. Finally, in Section III, the interactionist paradigm will be compared with some other major streams of contemporary sociological thinking.

3

I:

STREAMS OF INTERACTIONIST THEORISING

Symbolic Interactionism Dictionaries and handbooks of sociology often describe symbolic interactionism as a 'socio-psychological' school founded by G.H. Mead, which seeks to explain individual behaviour and consciousness out of the social process. This social process is st:en to be structured in patterns of mutually related and symbolically mediated actions. These patterns are acquired by the members of a given society in a lifelong process of socialization. Primarily, through learning the use of language the individual is able to 'cause within himself' those reactions which his actions might elicit from an interaction partner. By using the experience of the real and the anticipation of the possible reactions of the interaction partner, the individual gains control over his own actions and performances. On the assumption that human beings live in a natural as well as a symbolic environment and that they acquire almost all the symbols which they are going to use in communication and interaction with others, interaction is seen and defined as basically symbolic. It is mediated by symbols. The point here is not so much that the individual's perception of social reality is conceived of as being symbolically structured, but that social reality as such is so structured. This basic distinction justifies the symbolic interactionists' claim that it contributes to sociological and not just psychological theory. Symbolic interactionists maintain that interaction takes place in situations which are defined by those participating in them, using commonly shared symbols and meanings. Thus interaction depends on the common process of defining and re-defining situations and, in many cases, negotiating these definitions until a common definition is reached. Every inter-actor2 involved in an interaction interprets the actions of others by the stock of meanings which is at his, and the others', disposal. Simultaneously, he indicates to the other inter-actors in which way he desires his action to be interpreted. It is essential for any 'successful' interaction

2

The term 'inter-actor' is introduced here in order to emphasize, terminologically, the distinction made deliberately by interactionists between their concept of the 'actor' which conceptually accounts for the interaction history and the interaction context into which the 'actor' is inseparably embedded, and the behaviourist and functionalist concept of the 'actor' by which the individual actor is taken as the basic unit of analysis (methodological individualism).

4

that the involved inter-actors are capable of 'taking the role of the others'. This is a capacity developed and reinforced since early socialization by every means of communication via symbols. Socialization is, therefore, a maJor field of interest and research for symbolic interactionists. They are intimately concerned with the process by which human beings are socialized into cultural and sub-cultural settings. The personality model developed by G.H. Mead (I, Me, Self) in itself thought of as an interaction model serves, according to symbolic interactionists, to overcome the conventional theoretical separation of individual versus society. It also allows an understanding that social structures are being produced and reproduced by and through human interaction, even as human interaction is being preshaped and conditioned by social structures as perceived and defined in interaction contexts.

Phenomenological Sociology

The phenomenological method of recogmtwn (Erkenntnis-Methode) aims at what is called the 'essence' (Wesen) of reality lying 'in and behind' its mere outward appearance by 'bracketing' (einklam mern) the sensually perceivable elements of reality. Thus, phenomenology is basically opposed to all kinds of analytical approaches relying predominantly on 'observable' facts. Phenomenologically oriented sociologists are interested in the 'real' (in the sense of 'essentially real') life-world (lebenswelt) 3 which human beings establish and reproduce through their everyday activities. The main task of sociological analysis is seen to be the reconstruction of the 'real' life-world of human beings in precisely th~ form in which they themselves experience it. Phenomenological analysis begins with the crucial assumption that the 'real' life-world does not break down into a multiplicity of individual, subjective perspectives of this reality. Rather,

3

The term 'life-world' is the literal translation of the German term lebenswelt which was developed in the phenomenological tradition of German philosophy (E. Husserl). The concept of lebenswelt was then introduced into the social sciences by A. Schuetz in the sense of the 'world of everyday-life' structured by routine practices of action and by common-sense knowledge and experience -- the world 'known in common and taken-for-granted'. Meanwhile, the term 'life-world' has been introduced into the English language (see A. Schuetz and T. Luckmann, 1973). It seems, however, to still lack some of the distinct connotations linked with the German term lebenswelt as it was introduced into the social sciences by the German writings of A. Schuetz.

5

the reality of this world constitutes itself by and through its very Every individual, it is argued, shares the basic perception of his world with that of all the other actors he encounters in it. If this were not true, interaction and communication would break down, or become impossible. The very possibility of interaction depends on the structure of intersubjectivity invested in the life-worlds of people in the course of a complex history of interactions which are acquired anew, revitalized and elaborated in every interaction process taking place in the present. The very essence of this intersubjectivity lies in what has been called the 'reciprocity of perspectives' which is built into the structure of social 'facts' as well as internalized by the members of a society through socialization. It also lies in the 'reciprocity of role relations' constituting a social structure.

intersubjectivity. 4

Interaction processes develop along the line of typifications which people acquire in the course of their individual interaction history -- and which they develop and elaborate therein. Every culture and sub-culture provides a 'stock of knowledge'. This is structured and preserved by certain institutional settings and disseminated as well as permanently reconstructed in the course of everyday-life interactions. The members of a given society share this 'stock of knowledge' according to the particularities of their socialization process, their individual interaction history and their 'social standing'. Their access to the 'stock of knowledge' is mainly governed by learning and using the language (or languages) of that society in everyday-life interactions. The 'real' life-world is thought of as being articulated in culturally determined and differentially distributed contexts of meaning, within which intentional actions taken by individuals are determined according to their range of variation and their motivating schemes of interpretation. The stock of typified cultural knowledge, itself subjected to permanent change and elaboration as the complex process of social interaction in a society resumes, frames the range of projections of actions and interactions possible and which are actually taken by the actors in a given society.

4

In German, it is possible to express the abstract meaning of a relationship or condition by transforming an adjective or noun into another noun ending with ·taet {-ity). Similarly, in English it is possible to describe something as being 'a part of' something else by using the term 'partial'; the abstract word for something being 'partial' is 'partiality'. In this sense, intersubjectivity (intersubjektivitaet) stands for the abstract meaning of intersubjective relations being possible and real. The same is true for the concept of 'perspectivity' which will be introduced in subsequent discussions. 'Perspectivity' (perspektivitaet) stands for the abstract meaning of mutual perspectives (in a situation) being possible and real.

6

It should be noted here that the predominant phenomenological mode

of explanation is not that of deduction or, more specifically, causation, but that of discovering and decoding the 'conditions of potentiality' (Bedingungen der Moeglichkeit). 5 Sociological theory, phenomenologists argue, should be intimately related to the intersubjectively held and shared typifications structuring the 'real' life-world of inter-actors. In sociological theory, these typifications should be reconstructed on a meta-level. Alfred Schuetz has termed this the level of "second-grade typifications". Verstehen, 6 as a basic social science methodology, thus aims to reconstruct, in a reflexive and controlled way, how the problem of Verstehen is solved in everyday-life interaction itself. This means that interpretation and evaluation of the 'first-level' process of Verstehen must be elaborated at the 'second level' of theoretical typifications to reconstruct these everyday-life typifications. The progress of this phenomenological approach to Verstehen as compared with previous models developed on the basis of acts of intuition by the observer, lies in its two-level distinction: Verstehen is no longer thought of as the attempt by the scientific observer and researcher to get, by whatever means, into the individual actor's 'inner world'. Instead it

5

The epistemological concept of Bedingungen der Moeglichkeit (translated very roughly here as 'conditions of potentiality') is used to describe the formal presuppositions which must be given and fulfilled in order to render something possible. This concept does not imply the notion of causation -- in fact, it has been developed and used as some kind of counter-concept to causation. In a causal relation, A is supposed to bring about B in the same way and form at different times, surrounding factors being kept constant. Causal analysis in a strict sense does not seem to be applicable to the majority of phenomena under consideration in the social sciences. Functional analysis, as developed in the nineteenth century, has been one attempt at overcoming this problem. Another attempt, basic to phenomenological analysis, was to focus on the formal presuppositions and conditions of the emergence of phenomena to be analysed. For instance, the assumption that my interaction partner has acquired some kind of 'personal identity' as I think of myself 'possessing' it, is a 'pragmatic' Bedingungen der Moeglichkeit for the emerging of 'successful' interaction between us. The social scientist's insight that this assumption is being made in everyday-life interaction is the 'formal' Bedingungen der Moeglichkeit for his potentiality to reconstruct this interaction in scientific analysis.

6

The German term Verstehen (meaning literally 'Understanding') cannot be translated adequately into English. Thus, the German term is frequently used in English social science literature. Verstehen as a sociological method was first conceptualized by Max Weber (as verstehende Soziologie). Weber's method of Verstehen worked on two levels: the level of 'understanding the subjective meaning the actor attaches to his actions'; and the level of 'understanding the structure of a society and culture', mainly by analysing how it emerged in the course of history. Though himself a 'rationalist', Max Weber was drawing from the pure German tradition of Geisteswissenschaft (Dilthey) when developing his verstehende Soziolagie. Unfortunately, he did not elaborate a distinct methodology of Verstehen, and in his own empirical and historical research, the methodology of Verstehen hardly becomes manifest. (Regarding further developments in verstehende Soziologie, see p. 12 and footnote 10.)

7 is thought of as the attempt by the scientific observer and researcher to reconstruct in a controlled and reflexive way those processes of Verstehen as they are enacted by the inter-actors, and to analyse the modes by which they are institutionalized in a given culture in order to give permanence to the process of Verstehen. Max Weber's approach to Verstehen remams far behind this phenomenological approach, as does the practice of cross-cultural Verstehen in traditional research in social and cultural anthropology. Very much like symbolic interactionists, phenomenologists are striving to overcome the classical distinction of individual versus society and that type of methodological individualism normally connected with it; for example, Max Weber's approach to understanding the 'meanings held by the individual' ( Verstehen des subjektiv gemeinten Sinns). The basic concepts used by phenomenologists in this attempt are that of 'invested' and 'institutionalized' intersubjectivity, and that of everyday-life interactions and the life-world as basic forms in which intersubjectivity is institutionalized. The concepts of 'everyday-life' and 'life-world' are defined as interactions in wellknown and taken-for-granted life situations on the basis of mutual expectations which are subject to shared anticipations. It is obvious that the phenomenological approach rests on the implicit socio-philosophical or anthropological assumption that human beings are basically alien to each other. Accordingly, society and culture have to be seen in their historical development as well as in their systematic structure as the permanently ongoing 'great effort' of human beings to construct and reconstruct all kinds of devices within which problems arising from their being basically alien to each other can be solved in mutually satisfying ways.

Ethnomethodology The term 'ethnomethodology' has been coined by Harold Garfinkel to distinguish the type of research which he and others began to introduce into the social sciences during the second half of the sixties. Based on theoretical and methodological groundwork laid by phenomenological tradition in the social sciences, ethnomethodology is conceived of by its founders as an 'activity' (not so much as a systematic theory-guided research method) to 'bring out' or 'detect' the basic rules underlying everyday-life routine activities of the members of a given society and/or a given social group by provoking their taken-for-granted status. Most ethnomethodologists, including Garfinkel,

8

deliberately reject the notion that scientific activities (including ethnomethodological ones) are profoundly and distinctively different from everyday-life activities of any other kind. They are primarily concerned with the basic rules of interpretation underlying (and inherent in) observable interaction processes. These basic rules are thought of as governing the actual interaction process which frames the individual and social perception of what is 'normal' , what can be expected, and what can not. These rules can be compared to the implicit grammar which governs the everyday use of language. It is not by chance, therefore, that in discussions on ethnomethodology, terms like 'grammar of interaction', Interakt£onsfahrplan (time-table of interaction) and similar expressions have been used frequently to describe what ethnomethodologists are looking for. Ethnomethodologists have used Karl Mannheim's term "documentary interpretation'' to describe the process whereby social roles are mutually anticipated and carried out in everyday-life interactions, and mutually taken over by inter-actors in order to define and negotiate the interaction situation. This means that the inter-actors mutually do not interpret their actions in blunt, physically observable forms, but as 'documents' (Ausdruck) of an underlying pattern. In relating the observable action of an interaction partner to an assumed underlying pattern, the inter-actors open up a range of mutual interpretations during the course of which they ultimately arrive at a mutually shared understanding of their performances. On the other hand, the assumed patterns to which the observable actions are related can themselves be identified only by taking the observable actions as 'indicators' of the patterns. Thus, interpretative processes of the continuous interplay in everyday-life interactions are caught up in the mutuality of identifying actions via patterns, and patterns via actions. This mutuality structure of interpretation is termed 'indexicality'. In coining the term 'indexicality', ethnomethodologists are departing from the assumption, which still partly underlies symbolic interactionism, that commonly shared symbols and patterns of meaning are part of an institutionalized realm of normative rules and structured role-sets and, thus, "exterior'' (to use Durkheim's sense of the word) to the inter-actors. Ethnomethodologists, by using the concept of indexicality, also depart from the conventional view that the 'hermeneutic circle' is a vicious circle. They accept it as the unescapable but ultimately productive structure for generating meanmg.

9

In the view of ethnomethodologists, the indexical relation between patterns and actions plays a dynamic part in the continuous production and reproduction of the 'social world'. Ethnomethodological 'research' aims to 'discover', 'detect', 'de-implicit' 7 the action-pattern indexicality in its productive function of generating meaning by provoking its taken-for-granted status. Ethnomethodological 'analysis' assembles types of activity which are subject to action-pattern indexicality. Thus, ethnomethodological 'research' does not pretend to produce 'findings' in a conventional sense. It also does not systematically develop 'theory'. Instead, it aims at reconstructing in a reflexive and selfreflexive manner those rules which are followed up in everyday-life interactions when the indexicality problem of interpretation is confronted and modes of 'certainty' are generated and established within the frame of indexicality. The very term 'ethnomethodology' encompasses the phenomenological assumption that human beings are basically alien to each other as well as the pretention that it is a 'practice', or 'methodology'. The outcome of ethnomethodological 'research' documented so far for public discussion proves this approach to be a genuine and effective way of applying phenomenological theory to social research. At the same time, the often crude methods of 'provoking' everyday-life activities -- in particular, what has been called 'crisis experiment' -- are questionable and have led ethnomethodologists iato heavy moral and ethical problems which seemingly cannot be easily overcome. These methods have also been, at times, rather unscrupulously directed at criticizing the everyday-life activities of other, more conventional, social scientists. Also, ethnomethodologists have developed a highly individualistic style of practising their approach which makes it fashionable and which detracts from any meaningful comparative analysis and discussion. Yet the impact of ethnomethodology on the development of interactionism in contemporary sociology cannot be underestimated. In sharp contrast to the often boring and meaningless surveytype of descriptive analysis in conventional social research, ethnomethodologists have paved the way for a new understanding of description in social research which is urgently needed -- a type of descriptive work starting from the inter-

7

'De-implicit' is just another of those unusual terms coined by ethnomethodologists in order to provoke the (verbal) everyday-life routines of social scientists and, at the same time, to attach verbal distinctions to their particular approach. 'De-implicit' here means 'make explicit'.

10

actors' perspectives and aimed at the discovery of the depth structures 8 of these perspectives through highlighting their intersubjectivity and indexicality.

The 'New' Sociology of Knowledge When Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann published in 1966 their pioneering study on the sociological theory of knowledge entitled The Social Construction of ReaHty, they initiated a profound revision of the classical approaches of Wissenssoziologie9 which had been introduced in the twenties (by Max Scheler and Karl Mannheim) but had deteriorated after the Second World War to just another branch of' hyphenated' sociology (Bindestrich-Soziologie) which focused on the social conditions of the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. All the fundamental theoretical and methodological issues raised, in particular by Karl Mannheim's contributions to Wissenssoziologie, were forgotten. Berger and Luckmann must be credited with reviving these issues and integrating them into the more recent theoretical and methodological developments. At the same time they criticized this sociological 'advancement' in the light of Wissenssoziologie. The German version of their book at once stimulated a lively discussion among German sociologists. This paved the way

8

The term 'depth structure' (Tiefenstruktur) is used with reference to philosophy of language, in particular to Noam Chomsky's contribution to it. According to Chomsky, the 'surface structure' (Oberflaechenstruktur) of a language represents the normative order of verbal consensus, whilst the 'depth structure' of a language represents the reflection of basic social and cultural order. Accordingly, in interaction theory, basic rules, for instance, are conceived of as relating interaction to the social and cultural order upon which it is resting (depth structure of interaction), whilst normative rules as part of the surface structure of interaction govern the emergence and preservation of actual consensus and shared definitions of a situation. (See Cicourel, 1973.)

9

By using the original German specification Wissenssoziologie, I intend to emphasize that this sociological discipline as it was developed in Germany during the twenties by M. Scheler and K. Mannheim was much more than just another version of 'hyphenated' sociology. K. Mannheim, in particular, conceptualized Wissenssoziologie as a core element of sociological theory including epistemological and methodological problems (such as 'documentary interpretation'). In his view, Wissenssoziologie should help to establish sociological reflection on the conditions and consequences of the productiop. of human knowledge as a dimension of theory construction in sociology. One of his main concerns was to overcome the traditional rationalistic way of contrasting scientific and nonscientific knowledge (such as Weltanschauungen -- world views, ideologies) and, instead, relate all forms of human knowledge to the social conditions of their production and use. Consequently, he strictly opposed the ratjonalistic concept of distinguishing the 'context of discovery' from the 'context of justification'. This distinction in his opinion, divorced the validity problem of scientific knowledge from any analysis of its social conditions. K. Mannheim's concern has been almost completely lost in the later development of the 'hyphenated' sociology of knowledge.

11

for an intensive rediscovery and revitalization of older traditions in German sociology, including the rediscovery of Alfred Schuetz whose writings were inaccessable in Nazi Germany. In the context of our discussion, some major achievements of the approach by Berger and Luckmann need to be emphasized:

1.

Within their understanding of what the sociology of knowledge should be, the focus of theory construction and research was again shifted from scientific knowledge and its social conditioning to everyday-life knowledge as applied at the grass-root level of social interaction. Thus, the authors succeeded in bridging two main streams of sociological thinking which were developing quite apart from each other: Karl Mannheim's concept of Wissenssoziologie and Alfred Schuetz' phenomenology of everyday-life.

2.

Berger and Luckmann stressed the role of language in generating and shaping everyday-life knowledge. This enabled the transfer of linguistic, in particular socio-linguistic, research methods and findings to the 'new' sociology of knowledge.

3.

Berger and Luckmann related their approach to the Marxian, Durkheimian and Weberian traditions in sociology, thus opening a broad discussion on paradigmatic interrelations in sociology.

4.

In the case of German sociology, Berger and Luckmann did not only contribute to the rediscovery of Alfred Schuetz, but they also introduced the writings of G.H. Mead and his followers into the German discussion. This American tradition had been fairly unknown because the Parsonian and Mertonian type of sociology had dominated the German sociologists' perception of American sociology.

Berger and Luckmann themselves did not enter into empirical research on the basis of their theoretical approach. They did not even elaborate a research methodology applicable to an empirically-oriented sociology of knowledge. But their book soon generated a broad and rich research tradition which also made use of the three theoretical and methodological traditions discussed above. Thus, firstly, a new methodology in social research was developed, starting from

12

the assumption that the 'objectivity' of social reality is a product of the "social construction of reality". Secondly, an attempt was made to "get into the actor's world" (H. Blumer) by utilizing linguistic analytical methods within social research. The main target of this 'new' sociology of knowledge was and is an analysis of the structure of interaction processes, using text material produced in interactions. Natural interaction situations (such as pub talks, doctor-patient encounters, court trials, academic examinations) were preferred to artificial situations established for experimental interrogative purposes. As the possibilities of recording natural interaction situations are limited for practical reasons, the major concern of this research has been and is how to construct situations in which text material can be produced in such a way that it resembles natural interaction situations to a high degree. Here again, modern socio-linguistic research has proved to be helpful, for example, in drafting a 'narrative' interview (which will be dealt with in more detail later in this paper). Some practices used in ethnomethodological research has also proved very helpful. It should be emphasized, however, that this 'new' sociology of knowledge, comprising quite a variety of research interests and attempts, differs from ethnomethodology in that kontrolliertes Fremdverstehen (controlled outside understanding) 1 0 is envisaged as a constitutive medium of scientific enquiry into the everyday-life practices of solving the problem of Verstehen. The basic principle of kontrolliertes Fremdverstehen applied in the 'new' sociology of knowledge is also distinct from the older tradition of verstehende Sociologie (in the way Max Weber conceived of it) which tried to look at the individual actor's meaning (Sinn) as just an additional source of information for the social researcher.

10

The concept of kontrolliertes Fremdverstehen (here roughly translated as 'controlled outside understanding') has been developed recently by German interactionists and 'interpretive' sociologists to specify a method of Verstehen which goes, above all, beyond that of Max Weber. In this context, Verstehen is a method and practice applied in everyday-life interactions to conceptualize the problem of human beings being basically alien (jremd) to each other. Furthermore, any method and practice of Verstehen used by social scientists is (a) concerned with the same problem and (b) aimed at reconstructing the everyday-life methods and practices of Verstehen. Just as everyday-life inter-actors try to establish control over their solutions of the problem of Verstehen, so also do social scientists. Thus, kontrolliertes Fremdverstehen always has to be thought of as working on two reciprocal levels: that of everyday-life interactions and that of reconstructing everyday-life interactions in scientific analysis.

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II:

SHARED CONCEPTS AND THEORETICAL CONVERGENCE

In tersu bj ectivi ty All the above converge on a paradigmatic level which has been labelled 'interactionism'. The main focus of this theoretical and research interest lies in the intersubjectivity of the social life-world, and on the modes and conditions of how this intersubjectivity is generated and preserved. It is not the individual actor's meaning as such which is of interest, but the structure of intersubjectivity which is the condition of potentiality (Bedingungen der Moeglichkeit) for an individual actor's meaning to emerge, and into which it is embedded. It is assumed in all the various themes that generating and preserving a structure of intersubjectivity is a prerequisite to rendering any kind of interaction possible and to establishing that network of interaction which we call society. Garfinkel says: . . . in contrast to certain versiOns of Durkheim that teach that the objective reality of social facts is sociology's fundamental principle, the lesson is taken instead, and used as a study policy, that the objective reality of social facts as an ongoing accomplishment of the concerted activities of daily life, with the ordinary, artful ways of that accomplishment being by members known, used, and taken for granted, is, for members doing sociology, a fundamental phenomenon (Garfinkel, 1967,

p. 7 .) For an interactionist, the structure of intersubjectivity, the interactional process of its production and preservation and its taken-for-granted character in everyday-life interactions are the most challenging topics of research and theory construction.

Symbolic Structure of Interaction Social interaction is seen as structured and mediated by the use of symbols. To give mutual indications by using signs is seen as the most relevant dimension of interaction, which internally guides what becomes physically

14

visible and observable as the 'motion' of interacting individuals. By the exchange of indicative signs, the inter-actors are able to mutually identify, interpret and even anticipate each other's actions, motives and aims, on the grounds of the intersubjectively shared set of meanings which are embedded and preserved in the everyday use of language and in all kinds of cultural settings common to a given society. The key role of language in everyday interaction lies in the shaping and defining of situations of micro- as well as of macro-relevance. The individual is socialized into a given culture (and sub-culture) mainly by learning how to use its language 'properly' in everyday activities. He thus learns to recognize the 'structure' of the culture (and society). Through this process, the individual becomes a medium of reproducing the social and cultural structure as well as a potential source of its change.

Everyday-life Knowledge As mentioned, the interactionist is not so much interested in exploring the unique meaning an individual attaches to his actions in order to use the result of this exploration as an additional source of information in research. Instead, the interactionist is interested in detecting and decoding the structures of intersubjectivity invested in interactions (which are seen as a condition for the emerging of individual meanings), and to discover how and to what extent individuals gain access to the socially distributed stock of everyday-knowledge at hand in a given culture (and subculture), and how and to what extent this process is institutionalized. The differential access to and use of a commonly shared stock of everyday knowledge is the major topic of an interactionist's analysis of social and cultural structures and processes. He is interested in getting into the set of basic rules governing the process of acquiring and using everyday knowledge.

Structures As' indicated, the interactionist departs from the conventional understanding of 'social structure' as used in behaviourism and functionalism as well as in systems theory and in the more orthodox streams of Marxism. In fact, the interactionist at this point leaves what Anthony Giddens refers to in his profound criticism of functionalism as the basic and implicit consensus

15

of social scientists during the last decades. Strictly opposing any kind of reification 11 of the concept of 'social structure', interactionists definitely and deliberately deny the 'nature-like' reality of social structures 'working behind people's backs' and determining their actions -- or at least their potential realm of action, as is implicitly or explicitly assumed in conventional sociological theories and research. Instead, interactionists view the inclination to 'reify' the notion of social structures as part of the internal logic of everyday knowledge in certain historical societies (mainly of the so-called Western type) that has been transformed into a 'scientific insight' and thus 'doubly-reified' and ipso facto reconfirmed as a reputable notion in everyday-life perception and interpretation. The particular cultural traditions contributing to this 'double-reification' process cannot be outlined here. It is obvious, however, that certain streams of Western rationalist philosophy and also certain streams of Protestant Weltanschauung play an important role. It should be added that interactionists share a similar reservation concemmg the concept of causality in conventional Western social sciences, thereby elaborating Georg Simmel's brilliant, but unfortunately scattered and not very systematic remarks on the notion of causality in everyday-life thinking and its

reification by inter-actors as well as social scientists (see G. Simmel, 1908, passim). Social structures, it is maintained by interactionists, have to be analysed

11

'Reification' means, very generally, to take concepts for facts and assumptions for truth. The sharp distinction between concepts and facts is an achievement and a heritage of the rationalistic tradition in Western philosophy. As such, it is part of the philosophy of the social sciences. This rationalistic tradition criticizes the fact that in ideologies, for example, concepts are taken for facts and assumptions for truth. Hegel and Marx, however, contributed the insight that such rationalistic criticism, though well-aimed and to the point, is insufficient because reification processes seem to be rooted in elementary processes of human action and interaction which exist above, or beneath rationalistic criticism of their cognitive structures. Since Hegel and Marx, several conceptual approaches have been developed in the philosophy of the social sciences which elaborate the fact that the reification of ideas and concepts is a basic human activity. Through reification, human beings 'objectivate' themselves and try to bring order into their natural and social environment -- an environment which is, to a great extent, beyond their immediate realm of action and interaction ('cosmisation'). This inclination towards reification is seen as linked to a contrary inclination of 'de-reifying' and re-defining reality in situations in which reified concepts become questionable under successfully disseminated rational criticism or when creating unsolvable problems of action and interaction. Both these inclinations are, then, seen in a 'dialectical' relation. The 'new' sociology of knowledge as introduced by P.L. Berger and T. Luckmann (1966) draws from this dialectical concept, and so do most of the streams of thinking converging in interactionism. The particular contribution of phenomenological approaches to this understanding of reification is to carefully analyse the two levels on which reifying processes occur (everyday-life typifications and scientific typifications) and to show how reifications on the first level can become 'doubly reified' on the second.

16

as they appear and emerge as such within the context of people's definition of social situations. They must thus be taken into account in analysing the process of drafting, anticipating and performing activities in everyday-life interaction because that is where the notion of social structures becomes effective in governing interactions ( cf. the so-called 'Thomas Theorem'}.

Indexicality and Theory Construction In some way or another, all the sub-streams of interactionism are concerned with the problem of what has been termed 'indexicality' by ethnomethodologists. Apart from what has been outlined before, it should be emphasized that in interactionism the process of theory construction in the social sciences is conceived of in the same terms as the indexicality problem. In everyday-life interactions, this is tackled by using certain techniques of 'documentary interpretation'. At this point, Herbert Blumer's notion of 'sensitizing concepts', Alfred Schuetz' notion of 'typifications of the second grade', and ethnomethodology converge in a concept of theory construction in the social sciences which differs fundamentally from the conventional concept of deductive theory. Although Glaser and Strauss cannot be easily identified as belonging to one of the streams of interactionism sketched here, their widely acknowledged outline of the paths to 'discovering grounded theory' can be taken as one of the most serious and elaborate attempts to develop an interactionist methodology. This approach has inspired much highly relevant research in the U.S. as well as in Europe. In the "operationalising methodology called grounded theory" (Glaser), theory construction is conceived of as a "full continuum'' involving both the process of generating theory and collecting and codifying data. All the steps and processes of social research are seen as being "guided and integrated by the emerging theory''. Accordingly, Glaser and Strauss provide a systematic methodology for tackling the indexicality problem within the framework of activities social scientists are supposed to perform, that is, tackling indexicality and not trying to 'heal' it, as verificational studies conventionally assume to do.

17

Methodological Implications The previous remarks on 'grounded theory' have already touched upon some of the basic methodological implications of interactionism.l2 By contrasting the 'interpretative paradigm' of interactionism to the 'normative paradigm' of most conventional sociological theory and methodology, Thomas Wilson has argued for a distinctive interactionist methodology. Although the details of Wilson's argument are not shared by all interactionists, it is obvious that the specific definitive interest, Erkenntnisz"nteresse of interactionists in intersubjectivity, indexicality and the 'built-in perspectivity' of the reality of the social life-world demands the elaboration of a type of verstehende methodology which enables the social scientist to reconstruct these three basic dimensions of social reality in his research. This reconstruction has to be 'appropriate', -- that is, it has to parallel the social life-world as it is constructed by the inter-actors themselves. This reconstruction should also not be a separate one reifying what is observable and measurable under the criteria set by the 'socially' preconceived assumptions of social scientists. Once again, two possible misunderstandings should be clarified here:

1.

The interactionist's methodology is not just a more recent verswn of Verstehen, of getting into the 'subjective' meaning world of individual actors, by whatever means, and of 'feeling with them' and intuitively following this stream of thinking and perceiving. Interactionist methodology is basically the attempt to make explicit the modes, rules and methods of how the inevitable problem of Verstehen is to be solved among inter-actors themselves in their everyday-life performances, setting 'conditions of potentiality'

(Bedz"ngungen der Moeglichkeit) for any kind of 'successful' interaction and for the emerging of individual meaning worlds. making these modes, rules and methods explicit, interactionists claim to open up access to the process of how 'society' and 'culture' are being built up and preserved.

12

In

Apart from what is to be discussed here, it should be emphasized that interactionist methodology draws from the rich tradition of field research in sociology and in social and cultural anthropology which has proved to be rather independent from one or the other paradigm in the social sciences. Much of the field research done, for instance in the so-called 'Chicago school', has stimulated the development of research in the interactionist approach. See Schatzman and Strauss (1973).

18

2.

It is obvious that the interactionist's research methods can, in some cases, be combined with conventional methods of observation and interviewing. In general, however, interactionist research methods are elaborated in a quite different way from the stimulus-response model basic to, for example, conventional interview procedures. The interview procedure utilized in interactionist research follows what Cicourel, Denzin and others have called the model of 'triangulation'. Triangulation starts from the outspoken and implicit perspectivity incorporated in the informant's view. Secondly, this perspectivity is analysed in relation to the meaning-structure detected in it through the application of linguistically-oriented methods of conversational analysis, sequence analysis and frame analysis. Thirdly, the social scientist's interpretation of this perspectivity is compared to and controlled by the informant's view -- thereby initiating, perhaps, another triangulation process. This third step may be performed by literally confronting the informant with the scientist's evaluation and interpretation and thus provoking the informant's reaction; or by some form of controlled conversational stimulation based on the results of previous research. On another level, interactionist analysis follows a second model of triangulation which relates the informant's perspectivity and its inherent meaning structure firstly to available data on his social and cultural 'standing'; secondly, to available data and assumptions concerning his participation in influential traumatic historical events (zeitgeschichtliche Grossereignisse) and, finally, to the informant's 'standing' in the life cycle as conceived of in his particular social and cultural surroundings. This aspect also includes the informant's 'individual' life history (in the sense of his interaction history) on which he bases his present self-perception and perception of his social life-world. When interactionists refer to 'social and cultural standing', they do not relate themselves to conventional stratification theory working on the basis of 'objectifiable' indicators, but to such complex concepts of soziale Lage (Theodor Geiger) and soziale Lagerung (Karl Mannheim) as they have been developed in the twenties and thirties prior to the present conventional stratification theory.

19

The Narrative Interview: An Example of lnteractionist Methodology In sociology, and in the social sciences in general, a broad variety of methods have been developed. These range from detached observational methods to what is called 'in-depth' interviewing -- one of the most important sets of methods following the parole 'ask people!'.

Illustration 1

70DS USED

OBSERVATION

/ PARTICIPANT

INI SOCIAL RESEARC"'-------- -------

INTERVIEW

ANALYSIS OF OBJECTIFIABLE INDICATORS

OTHERS

\ NONPART!CIPANT

A

X

EXPERIMENTAL

CONVERSATIONAL

One possibility for ordering interview methods is on a continuum stretching between two poles. On the one hand interviews can be performed in an experimental way (A) strictly following the S-R-Model. The question posed is conceptualized as a verbal stimulus constructed by the researcher according to preconceived assumptions about what kind of verbal reactions certain verbal stimuli might elicit. In this case, the exchange, besides the negotiation, of meaning between the interviewer and the. interviewe~ is deliberately and carefully avoided. The sequence of verbal stimuli and reaction (response) is devised according to the classical experimental model by which certain physical reactions are 'caused' by sending certain physical stimuli.

20

On the other hand, in the conversatt"onal interview model (X), the researcher enters into some kind of an 'open', 'unstructured' conversation with the informant. He is none the less guided by a preconceived set of items about which he wishes to collect information from the informant. The researcher introduces these items into the conversation step by step, fitting them into the conversational process at stages which appear favourable to him. Whilst the experimental interview is used primarily in socio-psychological research (particularly in attitudinal research}, the conversational interview is used mainly in cultural anthropological research. Other interview models may be located on this continuum (A-X}. Survey research using standardized questionnaires with multiple-choice answers, for example, would be located more towards A, while questionnaire research which utilizes passages of 'open' questions would be placed nearer to X. Although interactionists have some basic criticisms of the interview models along this A-X continuum, they do not claim to substitute them altogether. Rather, the interactionist is concerned with complementing them with regard to the core dimension of social reality. Hence, interactionists have developed and utilized a new type of 'narrative' interview during the last ten years. 13 By this type of interview, the outlined continuum IS extended beyond the conversational pole X by 'opening up' the interview process still more to the perspectivity of the informant. However, the principle of narrative interviewing differs basically from all the other forms of interviewing located on the continuum by departing from the practice of introducing preconceived items (apart from the starting and introducing stimulus) to be tested by whatever means and at whatever stage of the interviewing process. Instead, the narrative interview consists of recording an uninterrupted narration by the informant. This distinction

13

The research and evaluation technique of the narrative interview has mainly been developed by a German scholar, Fritz Schuetze (University of Kassel) who studied with Anselm L. Strauss for some time. He has presented several papers on the methodology of the narrative interview, as well as published the results of his own applications of this method, for example, in community studies and in studies of legal practices. So far, his writings are available only in German; English translations are in preparation. Many studies are in progress or have already been completed, using this method or variations of it in Germany -- on educational planning, unemployment (Matthes), interaction in psychiatric clinics (Riemann) and in camps of unhoused people (Obdachlosenquartiere) (Riemann), status passage (Gildemeister), migrant workers, and ecclesiastical occupations (Mar hold and Fischer). (There is also continuing contact between German scholars and those working with Strauss, Glaser, and others in California.)

21

is expressed by vertically extending the continuum beyond X towards Z (see Illustration 2).

Illustration 2

TESTING PRECONCEIVED ITEMS A

X

CONVERSATIONAL A

GENERATING THEORY ON RAISED ITEMS

X

EXPERIMENTAL NARRATIVE

z

z

Behind this type of narrative interview stands a long tradition of theory construction on narration in linguistics and Literaturwissenschaft (particularly literary criticism) which cannot be reproduced here in detail. This theory of narration starts from the assumption that human beings have a basically narrative relation towards themselves. They perceive (and learn to perceive) and account for the experience of their life-world by continuously narrating and re-narrating this perception and experience to themselves and steadily reflecting upon their stock of self-narrated life-world experiences. This narratively organized self-perception and life-world experien~e of human beings is not just an isolated dimension of the human subject's 'inner world;. It is drawn from and interwoven into the intersubjectivity of the social life-world which provides the rules, schemes and figurations of the narratively organized self-perception and life-world experience, ·thus forming the 'condition of potentiality' (Bedingungen der Moeglich'Reit) for the apparent uniqueness of the

22

individual human subject's ability to shape his self-perceptions and life-world expenences. Starting from this basic assumption, linguists, socio-linguists and other social scientists interested in language have developed a complex theory of narration. This theory is based on the methodological insight that once a narrator has started to produce a narration, several narrative 'constraints' become effective which mirror, and account for, the whole process of building up a narratively structured self-perception and life-world experience in permanent communication with others, or "generalised others" (G.H. Mead). Several such 'constraints' have been identified in textual analysis. These include:

1.

getting into highly detailed description at crucial points of the narration (Detaillierungszwang);

2.

building up recitable, communicable sequences of events and rounding them to a story-like form ( Gestaltschliessungszwang);

3.

generating articulate argumentation and legitimation at crucial points of the narration which to the narrator himself, or the audience as he conceives of it, does not seem to be satisfactorily explicit or 'explained' (Legitimierungszwang).

Resting on such elements of a theory of narration, the analysis and evaluation of narrated text material must be carried out on three levels:

14

1.

sequence analysis, reconstructing the scemc frame of reference in which events are narrated and chains of events are constructed in the narration;

2.

frame analysis, l4 reconstructing the frame of reference and relevance used in structuring the produced narration;

Though Erving Goffman's writings have their own profile, and cannot be easily subsumed to interactionism, they are close to interactionism. In particular, his .vorks on interaction rituals (1964) and on frame-analysis (1974) have contributed much to the development of interactionist methodology. Goffman's understanding of 'frames' is certainly much wider and more theoretically oriented than that applied here, where 'frame-analysis' is taken as a rather specific evaluation technique to be used in analysing narrated text material.

23

3.

trajectory analysis, identifying positive and negative trajectories of life history as depicted in the produced narrative material.

The narrative interview -- technically dependent on excellent tape-recording and transcription -- normally starts with some stimulus put forward by the researchers in the form of a conversation with the informant which focuses on explaining the researchers' interest. The attempt to perform a narrative interview can be taken as being successful if the informant at some point of this introductory conversation starts a continuous narration which should never be interrupted by the researchers. Without going into detail here as to the technique of producing a narrative interview, it should just be mentioned that at least two researchers should participate for the purpose of mutual control, particularly in writing an additional observation protocol after the interview and in the following process of analysing and evaluating the transcribed text material. A narrative interview can be more or less 'focused' on certain topics, items or chains of events. The starting stimulus used during the introductory conversational phase should clearly express and outline this 'focus'. Finally, it should be mentioned that in some cases a second phase of a more conversational type of interview during which questions which remained open during the narration can be taken up, has proved useful. There are two basic types of narrative interviews which have been used successfully in social research:

1.

the biographical interview in which the informant narrates the history of his life, in most cases focusing on a certain dimension or crucial chain of events in his life history as suggested by the interviewers (such as experiences of war, unemployment, divorce or religion).

2.

the narrative interview m a more narrow sense m which a certain number of people who have participated for some time in the same social process (for example, political leaders, members of parliament, representatives of interest groups engaged in a certain legislation process) tell the story of this process independently from each other.

In the second case, the analysis and evaluation of the produced text material is more open to comparison to secure the authenticity of the narrated events. This possibility is normally lacking in the former case. It should be

24

quite clear that in both cases, the focus of analysis lies on the authenticity of experience rather than on the authenticity of events (or facts). A combination of both types of narrative interviews can be used, for instance in the case of family interviews when members of a family belonging to different generational groups narrate the stories of their lives with reference to the same interactional context of their shared family history. 15 Both basic types of narrative interviews have proved to be very helpful to interactionists in achieving their objective: to reconstruct the built-in perspectivity of the social life-world and to decode the depth-structure of this built-in perspectivity as well as the basic rules by which the indexicality problem is resolved in everyday-life interaction and communication. The narrative interview and the evaluation procedures have also proved to be very effective in re-orienting theory construction in sociology towards the principle of generating an emerging theory in accordance with the data-raising process. This can be contrasted with the conventional concept of verificational research following the principle of testing preconceived hypotheses. It should be added here that this contrast must also be extended to different concepts of generalization. Verificational studies aim at developing generalizations by logical deduction on the basis of theoretically guided and preconceived data collection and evaluation. Studies guided by the principle of emerging theory, on the other hand, aim at detecting and reconstructing those generalizations inherent in the intersubjectively performed 'social construction of reality' of the life-world.

15

A combination of this type is used in the ISEAS project on religious change and modernization in Singapore for which this orientation paper was drafted. Thus, two levels of comparison are provided for analysis: on the one level, the narrations of members of the same family who belong to different generational groups are compared to trace the change of religious orientations within that family interaction context. On the other hand, different families studied in this way are compared with each other to uncover general trends of change. The panel of families established for this research takes into account religion, ethnicity and social standing. It should be added here that German social scientists have successfully developed comprehensive devices, particularly in family research, combining methods of narrative analysis with participant observation. See Oevermann (1979}.

25

III:

SOME DEMARCATIONS

Action Theory and Behaviourism

As mentioned before, the interactionist approach differs from vanous forms of classical action theory (Max Weber, Talcott Parsons) in so far as the principle of methodological individualism is not accepted. This means basically, that the observable individual actor is not taken as the basic unit of analysis. Instead, interactional networks in which the individual's forms of action and of generating meaning are taken as 'documents'. Even more emphatically, interactionism opposes all kinds of behaviourism, overt or implicit, in the social sciences. It is predominantly the reductionist element in behaviourism, together with the methodological argument behaviourists employ to justify their reductionist approach, which is criticized. In general, the behaviourist takes the physically observable 'motion' of individual actors as the only 'fact' accessable to reliable description and measurement. The process of attaching meaning to actions, and exchanging meaning through negotiation -- all of which are not accessable to reliable description and measurement -- are deliberately excluded from social analysis. To the behaviourist, these processes are only subject to conclusions drawn from the results of described and measured alterations in the physically observable 'motion' of individual actors. In an interactionist's view, this reductionist approach is characterized by a deliberate renunciation and consequent loss of insight into social reality. Interactionists argue that meaning structures can be subjected to scientific analysis, not just open to intuitive judgements which are beyond the intersubjective control of scientific analysis. This insight implies an understanding of what scientific analysis is, or should be. It transcends the behaviourist perspective which is caught up in the vicious cycle of defining reality according to the measurement standards of a certain scientific paradigm, and vice versa. Also, behaviourist approaches of all kinds (learning theory as well as exchange theory) are criticized because of their inherent tendency to produce hypotheses and theoretical statements of a highly trivial nature. This approach, for example, defers for casual empirical clarification the nuclear problem of what is conceived of as 'gratification', 'reward', and 'rationality' by the inter-actors (and why the inter-actors conceive of them the way they actually do). Thus, behaviourist analysis often leads to simple statements of the 'repeatedly-rewarded-actions-arereinforced' type. The most relevant problems of the interplay of meanings,

26

interpretations and re-interpretations are either excluded or, even worse, valued as 'peripheral empirical conditions' (empiri'sche Randbedingungen). Some confusion regarding the demarcation between interactionism and classical theories of action and behaviourism (and also systems theory) repeatedly arises because the term 'interaction' is also frequently used in these approaches, although in a radically different sense.

Functionalism and Systems Theory Regarding functionalism, and the systems theory approach which shares its basic assumptions, the main point of difference for interactionists is the use of core concepts like 'structure'. As has been pointed out, interactionists are in principle suspicious of the tendency to reify such concepts, in particular that of 'structure'. This tendency is mainly due to a profound lack of attention to interaction in the functionalistic tradition. As a consequence, functionalists tend to analyse human activities in terms of their 'function' within structural settings. In this respect they do not differ greatly from Marxists of the more orthodox type. Recent developments in systems theory include some efforts to overcome this basic problem. Niklas Luhmann, for instance, has tried to explain human activities by bringing the concept of system 'down' to the level of 'microinteraction' (einfachc Sozialsysteme). The direction of this effort, however, reveals once again the fundamental aporie in the systems theory approach. The explanatory problem of the social sciences cannot be to get hold of 'microprocesses' by deriving them from or relating them to 'macro-structures' (or vice versa) because the distinction between these two levels is itself a reifying construct of social scientists. Rather, social scientists should try to find out how the micro-macro distinction is produced and applied in human interaction to orient and structure human activities as if macro-stmctures were encroaching into the realms of their activities. Systems theory in its contemporary variations does not seem to be capable of reconstructing this dimension of human interaction processes within its conceptual framework. Thus, it fails to solve one of the most relevant explanatory problems of the social sciences.

27

Marxism

The interactionist commentary on functionalism and svstems theory can be extended to those variations of historical materialism -- in a broader sense, Marxism in sociology -- which are usually described as the more 'orthodox' ones. 'Orthodox' here refers to a preconceived theoretical analysis of social structures as class-structures, in which human activities are conceived of as 'functions', or 'reflections' ( Widerspiegelungen) of these structures. Again, it is the reification of the concept of 'structure' and the consequent denigration of the role of individual human activity which is criticized by interactionists. However, within the wide range of Marxist approaches in the social sciences, there are some which recognize this as a basic problem within Marxism. Some rather fruitful discussions in Europe and the United States have developed during the last two decades between Marxists of this orientation and interactionists. The main concept used in this Marxist approach, in contrast to class-structure, is Praxis . Referring predominantly to the early writings of Marx, Praxis is defined as the basic role of human activities in struggling with nature as well as in producing, reproducing and distributing all kinds of tools and goods for the purpose of survival and for the continuation of the generation and preservation of human society. In this context, one can mention Marxists of the traditional Gramsci school, the Yugoslav Praxis group, and the Hungarian 'Budapest school' which derives its inspiration from Georg Lukacs (Agnes Heller, for instance). Last but not least, the Frankfurt school of 'critical theory' (Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas) should be mentioned here. The interplay of Marxist and interactionist concepts in the more recent writings of Habermas is remarkable. In West Germany, there have been lively discussions on such topics as the role of everyday-life interaction and experience in shaping the workers' consciousness in capitalist as well as in socialist societies. Still, from all these promlSlng theoretical debates it has become clear that there remains an unbridgeable gap between Marxists and intcractionists on one crucial point of theory construction. As long as Marxists maintain that a definite and essential distinction has to be made between conceptualizing the undeniable process of generating and reproducing social structures in human interactions on the one hand, and conceptualizing what has been called "subject-free structures" Q. Berger) in society on the other, interactionists will continue to see the introduction of 'double reification'. The apparent inclination in everyday-

28

life knowledge towards reification of social forces is made to appear 'exterior' to the immediate realm of interaction, and thus, this inclination is 'doubly reified' by excluding it from further analysis. Here, interactionists are aware of the Durkheimian fault -- that is, starting sociological analysis by 'doubly reifying' to 'social facts' what in everyday-life interaction is already reified to social constraints and forces. In an interactionist's view, this insight into the Durkheimian fault is still in advance of Marxian epistemology.

IV:

CONCLUSION

Mainly under the influence of interactionism, and some streams within Marxism -- but also under the impact of other social and anthropological sciences -sociology, the core discipline of the social sciences is increasingly evolving into a multi-paradigmatic science. (In fact, sociology has always been to some extent a multi-paradigmatic science in Continental Europe.) This evolution is deplored by some. The application of Thomas Kuhn's model of shaping and changing paradigms in the sciences seems to have made possible the step-by-step introduction of a one-paradigm structure into sociology, and the social sciences in general during the past few decades. But, quite apart from the yet unsolved general problem of whether or not the Kuhn model can also be applied to the social sciences and the humanities, the one-paradigm structure of sociology, in particular, has finally been successfully criticized. Many crucial aspects of social interaction have been obscured and obliterated from the sociologist's perspective by the application of the one-paradigm model. Moreover, this model results in decreasing the value and wealth of the theory construction in sociology by reducing theoretical problems to methodological ones. Certainly, any rigid perspective as provided by a one-paradigm model increases the productivity of research in the short run by giving research a firm and grounded orientation and sheltering it in a clearly demarcated setting of what to do and what not to do. But the price to be paid for an advantage of this kind is no less than a profound loss of the perception of reality and a decrease of quality of theory.

29

Interactionists, and some Marxists, have successfully called attention to various losses of reality and to the decrease in quality of theory in post-war sociology. They have attempted to develop means and tools to remedy this defect. One of the most important lessons which should be drawn from these recent developments is that simply replacing one paradigm with another must be avoided at all costs. Instead, sociology must evolve into a social science of multiple paradigms. This corresponds best to the built-in perspectivity of social reality, or rather, to the multzplidty of soda/ realz'ties. At the same time, sociology is confronted with the challenge to develop a meta-theoretical and metamethodological framework within which competing paradigms can be subjected to continuous and systematic comparison. It is certainly true that sociologists have discovered this challenging task. But it is also true that so far relatively little has been done to master it.l6 Unfortunately, many sociologists still seem to be preoccupied with refining their obsolete conventional perspectives and research instruments -- not recognizing that they have long since been overtaken in terms of epistemology and methodology.

16

Following a discussion among German sociologists representing different paradigms which was held at one of the bi-annual meetings of the German Sociological Association in 1974, a working group of this association began 'comparing paradigms' (Theorienvergleich) in sociology which went on for several years. The most relevant papers produced by this working group have been published in German (K.O. Hendrich, J. Matthes; eds., 1978).

30

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In this bibliography, some sources indicate the theoretical and methodological positions discussed in this paper. For readers with a reading knowledge of German, some German titles are added in Section II.

I

English Alatas, Syed Hussein "The Captive Mind and Creative Development". Social Science Journal 26, no. 4 (Paris, i974) ..

International

Berger, Peter L., and Luckmann, Thomas The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, N.Y.: Inc., 1966. Blumer, Herbert "What is Wrong with Social Theory?" 19 (1954): 3-10.

American Sociological Review

Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1969. Cicourel, Aaron V. Method and Measurement zn Sociology. 1964.

Doubleday

New York:

Englewood

Free Press,

"Basic and Normative Rules in the Negotiation of Status and Roles" In Recent Sociology 2. London: Macmillan, 1970.

Cognitive Sociology.

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Penguin, 1973.

Denzin, Norman "Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnomethodology: A Proposed Synthesis". American Sodological Review 34 (1969): 922-34. Douglas, Jack D., ed. Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.

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Durkheim, Emile The Rules of Sociolog£cal Method. Chicago: Press, 1938. French edition, 1895. Filmer, Paul, et.al. New D£rections zn Sociological Theory. Collier-Macmillan, 1972. Garfinkel, Harold Studies in Ethnomethodology. Hall, Inc., 1967.

University of Chicago

London, New York:

Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:

Giddens, Anthony New Rules of Sociological Method: Interpretative Sociologies. London:

Prentice

A Positive Critique of Hutchinson, 1976.

Glaser, Barney G. Theoretical Sensitivity: Advances in the Methodology of Grounded Theory. Mill Valley, Calif.: The Sociology Press, 1978. Glaser, Barney G., and Strauss, Anselm L. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1967. Goffman, Erving Interaction Rituals.

Garden City, N.Y.:

Strategic Interaction. 1969.

Philadelphia:

Doubleday Inc., 1967.

University of Pennsylvania Press,

Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organisation of Experience. New York: Harper, 1974. Mannheim, Karl "On the Interpretation of Weltanschauung". In Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. Translated and edited by Paul Kecskemeti. New York: Oxford University Press, 1952. McHugh, Peter Defining the Situation.

Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1968.

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Mehan, Hugh, and Wood, Houston The Reality of Ethnomethodology. Mead, George H. Mind, Self, and Society. 1934.

Chicago:

The Philosophy of the Act. 1938.

New York:

Wiley, 1975.

University of Chicago Press,

Chicago:

University of Chicago Press,

Natanson, Maurice, ed. "Phenomenology and Social Reality". In Essays zn Memory of Alfred Schuetz. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1970. Schatzman, Leonard, and Strauss, Anselm L. Field Research: Strategies for a Natural Sodology. Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1973. Schuetz Alfred Collected Papers. 1964, 1966.

3 volumes.

The Hague:

Schuetz Alfred, and Luckmann, Thomas The Structures of the Lzfeworld. Evanston: University Press, 1973. Sinha, Debrabata Studies in Phenomenology. Strauss, Anselm L. Mirrors and Masks. Reprint, 1970.

The Hague:

San Francisco:

Englewood

M. Nijhoff, 1962,

Northwestern

M. Nijhoff, 1969.

The Sociology Press, 1959.

Negotiations: Varieties, Contexts, Processes, and Social Order. San Francisco: Jossey·Bass, 1978. Strauss, Anselm L., and Fisher, Berenic M. "Interactionism". In A History of Sociological Analysis. Edited by T. Bottomore and R. Nisbet. London: Heinemann, 1980.

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Sudnow, David, ed. Studies in Social Interaction. Turner, Roy, ed. Ethnomethodology: 1972.

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Selected Readings.

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Hannondsworth,

Wilson, Thomas "Conceptions of Interaction and Forms of Sociological Explanation". American Sociological Review 35 (1970): 697-710.

II

German Arbeitsgruppe Bielefelder Soziologen, eds. Alltagswissen, Interaktion und gesellschaftl£che Wirkl£chkeit [Everydaylife-knowledge, Interaction and Social Reality] 2 volumes. Reinbek/ Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1973.

Kommunikative Sozialforschung [Communicative Social Research], Muenchen: Fink, 1976. Berger, Johannes "Intersubjektive Sinnkonstitution und Sozialstruktur" [The Constitution of Meaning by Subjects and the Social Structure]. In Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie 7, no. 4 (Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1978). Ehlich, Konrad, ed. Erzaelen im Alltag (Everyday Life Narration]. 1980.

Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp,

Geiger, Theodor Die Soziale Schichtung des Deutschen Volkes [Social Stratification in Germany]. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1967 (1932). Habermas, Jurgen Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (The Logic of Social Sciences]. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970.

34

Heller, Agnes Das Alltagsleben [On Everyday-Life].

Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp, 1978.

Handrich, Karl 0., and Matthes, Joachim, eds. Theorienvergleich in den Sozialwissenschaften [Comparing Paradigms in the Social Sciences]. Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1978. Joas, Hans Praktische Intersubjektivitiit [Practical Intersubj ectivity] . Suhrkamp, 1980.

Frankfurt:

Luhmann, Niklas "Einfache Sozialsysteme" [Simple Social Systems]. In Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie 1, no. 1 (Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1972). Mannheim, Karl Wissenssoziologie.

Darmstadt:

Lu.chterhand, 1964.

Oevermann, Ulrich, et.al. "Die Methodologie einer objektiven Hermeneutik und ihre allgemeine forschungslogische Bedeutung in den Sozialwissenschaften" [The Methodology of Objective Hermeneutics and its Relevance in Social Research]. In Interpretative Verfahren in den Text und Sozialwissenschaften. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979. Schuetze, Fritz Sprache soziologisch gesehen [Language m Sociological Perspective]. 2 volumes. Muenchen: Fink, 1975. "Zur Hervorlockung und Analyse von Erzaehlungen thematisch relevanter Geschichten im Rahmen soziologischer Feldforschung" [How to Elicit and Analyse Narrations in Sociological Field Research]. In Alltagswissen, Interaktion, und gessellschaftliche Wirklz'chkeit. Edited by Arbeitsgruppe Bielefelder Soziologen. Reinbek/Hamburg: Rewolt, 1976. "Die Technik des narrativen Interviews m Interaktionsfeldstudien" [The Technique of the Narrative Interview -- Applied in Studies of Interaction] . Arbeitsberichte und Forschungsmaterialien, no. 1. Fakultaet fuer Soziologie, Universitaet Bielefeld, 19 77.

35

Simmel, Georg Soziologie.

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Soeffner, Georg, ed. Interpretative Verfahren in den Text und Sozialwissenschaften [Interpretative Methods in the Textual and Social Sciences]. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979. Weingarten, Elmar, and Sack, Fritz, eds. Ethnomethodologie [Ethnomethodology]. 1976.

Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp,

INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES LIST OF PUBLICATIONS IN THE

RESEARCH NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS PAPERS SERIES 1

M. Mainguy, Economic Problems Related to Oil and Gas Exploration, 1976. 39pp. (Out of print)

2

R. William Liddle, Cultural and Class Politics in New Order Indonesia, 1977. 21pp. (Out of print)

3

Raja Segaran Arumugam, State and Oil in Burma, 19 7 7. (Out of print)

4

Hilman Adil, ,Australi'a's Policy Towards Indonesia During Confrontation, 1962-66, 1977. 90pp. (Out of print)

5

Albert D. Moscotti, Burma's Constitution and Elections of 1974: A Source Book, 1977. 184pp. (Out of print)

6

Thamsook Numnonda, Thailand and the japanese Presence, 1941-45, 1977. 142pp. (Out of print)

7

Nguyen The Anh, The Withering Days of the Nguyen Dynasty, 1978. 33pp. S$4.00

8

M. Rajaretnam, Thailand's Kra Canal: (Out of print)

9

R.O. Whyte and Pauline Whyte, Rural Asian Women: Environment, 1978. 34pp. S$4.00

10

Ismail Kassim, The Politics of Accommodation: An Analysis of the 1978 Malaysian General Election, 1978. llOpp. (Out of print)

11

Leo Suryadinata, The "Overseas Chinese" in Southeast Asia and China's Foreign Policy: An Interpretative Essay, 1978. 45pp. (Out of print)

12

Y. Mansoor Marican, Public Personnel Administration zn Malaysia, 1979. 21pp. (Out of print)

13

Norbert Hofmann, A Survey of Tourism in West Malaysia and Some Socio-Economic Implicatz"ons, 1979. 48pp. (Out of print)

Some Issues, 1978.

36pp.

82pp.

Status and

14

B.A. Hamzah, Oil and Economic Issues in Brunei, 1980.

34pp.

S$7.50

15

Lee Yong Leng, The Razor's Edge: Boundaries and Boundary Disputes in Southeast Asia, 1980. 29pp. S$7.50

16

Anton van Naerssen, Location Factors and Linkages at the Industrial Estates of Malacca Town: Implications for a Regional Development Policy in Peninsular Malaysia, 1980. 31pp. S$7 .50

17

Pradumna B. Rana, Exchange Rate Risk Under Generalized Floating: Ez:f(ht Asian Countries, 1980. 20pp. S$5.00

18

Parsudi Suparlan and Hananto Sigit, Culture and Fertility: Indonesia, 1980. 41pp. S$7.50

19

Nor Laily Aziz et al., Culture and Fertility: 1980. 92pp. S$12.50

20

Amelia B. Alfonso, Leda L. Layo and Rodolfo A. Bulatao, Culture and Fertility: The Case of the Philippines, 1980. 67pp. S$9.50

21

Chang Chen-Tung, Ong Jin Hui and Peter S..J. Chen, Culture and Fertility: The Case of Singapore, 1980. 95pp. S$12.50

22

Suchart Prasithrathsint, Likhit Dhiravegin and Chavalit Siripirom, Culture and Fertility: The Case of Thailand, 1980. 68pp. S$9.50

23

Sritua Arief, A Test of Leser's Model of Household Consumption Expenditure in Malaysia and Singapore, 1980. 35pp. S$7.50

24

Saw Swee-Hock, Estimation of Interstate Migration in Peninsular Malaysia, 1947-1970, 1980. 34pp. S$7.50

25

H.E. Wilson, The Klang Strikes of 1941: Labour and Capital zn Colonial Malaya, 1981. 39pp. S$7.50

26

Ooi Guat Tin, The ASEAN Preferential Trading Arrangements (PTA): An Analysis of Potential Effects on Intra-ASEAN Trade, 1981. 34pp. S$7.50

27

Michael G. Peletz, Social History and Evolution in the Interrelationship of Adat and Islam in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan, 1981. 59pp. S$9.50

28

Somboon Suksamran, Political Patronage and Control over the Sangha, 1981. 57pp. S$9.50

29

Joachim Matthes, Interactionism in Sociology: Theoretical Basis and Methodological Implications, 1982. 35pp. S$7.50

The Case of

The Case of Malaysia,

THE AUTHOR Joachim Matthes is Professor of Sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, Federal Republic of Germany, and is currently engaged in a research project in Singapore, together with Dr. Sharon Siddique, on "Religious Change and Modernization, the Case of Singapore". During his career, he has held various professorial posts in German universities and conducted study/lecture tours in India, the Philippines and Indonesia.