Social Psychology

Alfred R. Lindesmith, Anselm Strauss, Norman K. Denzin

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781506338811
• Edition: 8
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Eighth Edition of this classic text provides a basic introduction to the field of social psychology. Taking a critical symbolic interactionist approach, Social Psychology helps students understand the very nature of how individuals do things together in today's society. The book has been significantly revised taking into consideration a number of recent turns in the field, such as: the increased sense that American social psychology is deeply embedded in world culture; that postmodernism has much to offer the sudy of the social world; and that new theories on sexuality, identity, deviance and the body provide a fascinating viewpoint on a person within society.

PART I

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

1

The Field of Social Psychology

The chapters in Part I offer an overview of our conception of the field of social psychology. In this chapter we have two major goals. The first is to define and locate the field of social psychology within the human disciplines. The second is to make a statement concerning our position as social psychologists. We call our point of view critical symbolic interactionism and connect it to cultural studies and pragmatic, feminist social philosophy (see Denzin, 1992, 1997; Seigfried, 1996; Strauss, 1993; West, 1989).

A Definition of the Field

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Social psychology is an interdisciplinary field located midway between sociology and psychology. It also occupies central places on the borderlines that separate anthropology, history, and literature (Benson, 1993). Sociologists study the economic, political, and cultural processes that shape social structure and contemporary cultural life (Fine, House, & Cook, 1995, p. xi; Hall, 1996a, p. 9). Psychologists study the processes of mental life: memory, perception, reasoning, cognition, and emotion.

Sociological social psychologists study how interacting individuals, in today’s advanced, late-capitalist societies, do things together (Becker, 1986, p. 11; Giddens, 1989, p. 520)—how people do collective protests, cook meals, play games, make love, have family dinners, go to the movies, attend and give lectures, and so on. Social psychologists examine how humans use language and develop conceptions of social and personal identity (Hall, 1996b, p. 597), including how these identities are shaped by such factors as race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, and age.

Following C. Wright Mills (1963), it is understood that individuals live in a secondhand world, a world shaped and defined, in large part, by the mass media. Human existence is not determined solely by interaction, or by social acts. Mills puts this forcefully: “The consciousness of human beings does not determine their existence; nor does their existence determine their consciousness. Between the human consciousness and material existence stand communications, and designs, patterns, and values which influence decisively such consciousness as they have” (p. 375). The information technologies (the mass media) of late-modern societies mediate and define everyday social life.

American social psychology is deeply embedded in world culture. The social psychological project has changed because the world that social psychology confronts has changed. Disjuncture, disruption, and difference define the global, cultural economy in which we all live (Appadurai, 1996). National boundaries and identities blur. Today many people are tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, or guest workers, moving from one part of the world to another. The global cultural economy is shaped by new information technologies, shifting systems of money, and media images that flow across old national borders. Cultural narratives still entangled in the Enlightenment worldview circulate between the First and Third Worlds (see Fischer, 1994; Geertz, 1995, pp. 128–131). The periphery has been electronically transported into the center of these First World stories. Old master images and values—from freedom to welfare, human rights, sovereignty, representation, and “the master-term ‘democracy’” (Appadurai, 1990, p. 10)—are part of this global system.

Because we live today in a postcolonial world, it is necessary to think beyond the nation or the local group as the focus of social psychological inquiry (Appadurai, 1993, p. 411; see also Appadurai, 1990, 1996). This is the age of electronic capitalism. Postnational social formations compete for resources to serve the needs of refugees, exiles, and victims of ethnic and cultural genocide. The United States has become “a federation of diasporas, American-Indians, American-Haitians, American-Irish, American-Africans … the hyphenated American might have to be twice hyphenated (Asian-American-Japanese, or … Hispanic-American-Bolivian)” (Appadurai, 1993, p. 424).

These worldwide changes are challenging traditional understandings surrounding gender, sexuality, family, nationality, and personhood. The meanings of these changes are amplified by the electronic media. As a consequence of this complex international situation, many individuals now experience crises of identity. Some social theorists argue that contemporary identities are breaking up and becoming fractured (Gergen, 1991; Hall, 1996b, p. 596). Paraphrasing Hall’s (1996b, p. 597) quote of Mercer (1990, p. 43), for many individuals, something that was previously assumed to be stable, fixed, and coherent is now defined by experiences of uncertainty and doubt.

The Existential Focus

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This crisis leads to an existential focus on how humans experience freedom and constraint in their daily lives. That is, how do individuals bring purpose and meaning into their lives when doubt, uncertainty, and personal responsibility are in flux and change? Of course, humans define and create their own experiences, but the situations in which experiences occur, and the meanings of those experiences, are often given in advance by the social, cultural, political, and economic institutions of society. Social psychologists study the interplay between gendered lives and social structures as well as the interplay among biographies, personal and social constraints, and the social order.

This focus leads to an examination of two key issues: how humans are created and transformed by the social order and, in turn, how humans create and shape the social situations that mold their behavior. These two issues can be broken down into four basic problems pertaining to (a) stability and change in gendered human interaction; (b) the emergence of new forms and patterns of interaction in daily life; (c) conformity, conventionality, deviance, and power; and (d) social order, constraint, and personal freedom.

The following example should help make our point. The United States is a drug-taking society. Not only do Americans use and abuse prescription drugs at a high rate, but alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and other “street drugs” are regularly consumed by more than half of the adult American population. Some 22 million Americans—1 out of every 10—report having used cocaine at least once. In fact, a decade ago, middle-class America’s drug of choice was cocaine, for everyone from athletes and doctors to rock musicians and railroad employees. In the late 1980s, crack cocaine became the drug of choice for many (Reeves & Campbell, 1994); more recently, many Americans have been drawn back to a drug that was very popular at midcentury—heroin.

In the past decade, the commissioners of the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and Major League Baseball have ruled that all athletes in their organizations must submit to regular drug tests to determine if they are free of illegal drugs, including cocaine. Drug testing is also now required for all federal employees. Some see these measures as an invasion of personal freedom.

As society reaches out through its laws and legal agencies into the workplace and the home, it creates social situations that constrain human experience. Although on the one hand American society encourages drug taking, on the other it argues that taking certain drugs is illegal.

We have, with this example, an illustration of the four concerns of the social psychologist. Drug-taking experiences are changing as a result of these controversies. At the same time, new drugs are appearing, and perhaps some will replace crack cocaine and alcohol. Some people will conform to the new laws, others will deviate and not conform. As this occurs, society through its laws exercises power and constraint over those who deviate. Hence new forms of constraint will come into existence as the freedom to take drugs is challenged, if not removed.

The Narrative Turn in Social Psychology

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Symbolic interactionists emphasize the reflexive, situated nature of human experience. They examine the place of language and multiple meanings in interactional contexts. This reflexive concern is also evidenced in other points of view, including phenomenology (the study of meaningful inner experience); hermeneutics (the study of texts and their meanings); semiotics (the science of language); psychoanalysis; feminism (Nicolson, 1995); narratology (Murray, 1995); cultural (Much, 1995), discursive (Harré, 1995; Perinbanayagam, 1991), and dialogical psychologies (Shorter, 1995); interpretive sociology; and cultural studies (see Hall, 1996a, p. 14).

The concern for these issues has been called the narrative, or discursive, turn in the human disciplines. This implies greater interest in language, discourse, and discursive practices, and the argument that meaning is contextual (Hall, 1996a, p. 14). This narrative turn moves in two directions at the same time. First, social psychologists formulate and offer various narrative versions, or stories, about how the social world operates. This form of narrative is usually called a theory—for example, Freud’s theory of psychosexual development.

Second, social psychologists study narratives and systems of discourse, arguing that these structures give coherence and meaning to the world. A system of discourse is a way of representing the world. A complex set of discourses is called a discursive formation (Hall, 1996c, p. 201). The traditional gender belief system in U.S. culture, with its focus on patriarchy and woman’s place being in the home, is an instance of a discursive formation. Discursive formations are implemented through discursive practices, such as patriarchy and the traditional etiquette system.

Systems of discourse both summarize and produce knowledge about the world (Foucault, 1980b, p. 27). These discursive systems are seldom just true or false. In the world of human affairs, truth and facts can be constructed in different ways. Consider this question: “Are those Palestinians who are fighting to regain a home on the West Bank of Israel freedom fighters, or terrorists?” (Hall, 1996c, p. 203). The very words that are used to describe individuals prejudge and evaluate their activities. Freedom fighter and terrorist are not neutral terms. They are embedded in competing discourses. As such, they are connected to struggles over power—that is, who has the power to determine which term will be used? As Hall (1996c) notes, “It is the outcome of this struggle which will define the ‘truth’ of the situation.” Often it is power, “rather than facts about reality, which makes things £true’” (p. 203).

Power produces knowledge (Foucault, 1980b, p. 27). Regimes of truth can be said to operate when discursive systems regulate relations of power and knowledge (Hall, 1996c, p. 205). The traditional gender belief system, which regulates the power relations between men and women in this culture, is such a regime. In these ways discursive systems affect lives.

Experience and Its Representations

Of course, it is not possible to study experience directly, so social psychologists study representations of experience—interviews, stories, performances, myth, ritual, and drama. These representations, as systems of discourse, are social texts, or narrative, discursive constructions. Bruner (1984) clarifies this situation, making needed distinctions among three terms: reality, experience, and expressions of experience.

Reality refers to “what is really out there” (Bruner, 1984, p. 7). Experience refers to “how that reality presents itself to consciousness” (p. 7). Expressions describe “how individual experience is framed” (p. 7). A “life experience consists of the images, feelings, sentiments … and meanings known to the person whose life it is. … A life as told … is a narrative” (p. 7). The meanings and forms of experience are always given in narrative representations. These representations are texts that are performed, stories told to others. Bruner is explicit on this point: Representations must “be performed to be experienced” (p. 7). In these ways, social psychologists deal with performed texts, rituals, stories told, songs sung, novels read, dramas performed. To paraphrase Bruner: Experience is a performance. Social psychologists study how people perform meaningful experience.

The politics of representation is basic to the study of experience. As indicated above, how a thing is represented often involves a struggle over power and meaning. Although social psychologists have traditionally privileged experience itself, it is now understood that no life, no experience, can be lived outside of some system of representation (Hall, 1996d, p. 473). Indeed, “there is no escaping from the politics of representation” (Hall, 1996d, p. 473).

This narrative turn suggests that social psychologists are constantly constructing interpretations about the world, giving shape and meaning to what they describe. Still, all accounts, “however carefully tested and supported, are, in the end ‘authored’” (Hall, 1996a, p. 14). Social psychological explanations reflect the points of view of their authors. They do not carry the guarantee of truth and objectivity. For example, feminist scholars have repeatedly argued (rightly, we believe) that the methods and aims of positivistic social psychology are gender biased, that they reflect patriarchal beliefs and practices. In addition, the traditional experimental methods of social psychological inquiry reproduce these biases (Nicolson, 1995, pp. 122–125).

Assessing Interpretations

The narrative turn and the feminist critique have led social psychologists to be much more tentative in terms of the arguments and positions they put forward. It is now understood that there is no final, or authorized, version of the truth. Still, there are criteria of assessment that should be used. Social psychologists are “committed to providing systematic, rigorous, coherent, comprehensive, conceptually clear, well-evidenced accounts, which make their underlying theoretical structure and value assumptions clear to readers. … [Still] we cannot deny the ultimately interpretive character of the social science enterprise” (Hall, 1996a, p. 14).

Charles Lemert (1995) reminds us that sociology is an act of the imagination, that the various sociologies are “stories people tell about what they have figured out about their experiences in social life” (p. 14). This is how we can understand social psychology: various stories about the social world, stories people tell themselves about their lives and the worlds they live in, stories that may or may not work.

Basic Social Processes

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Four fundamental processes structure human experience. The first is material reality itself, which includes human needs, money, wealth, health, housing, work, and labor. The second process involves the interconnections among race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. A gender- and race-based system of stratification organizes the relations between men and women in any society (Clough, 1994). Language is the third process; it defines and mediates human experience. Language, in the form of laws, visual representations, and printed texts, has a material presence in everyday life. It regulates social experience. Subjective experience is the fourth major process that gives meaning to human experience. Subjective experience is mediated by language. In this subjective realm struggles over race, gender, sexuality, and material reality occur.

Race and Gender

All of human experience is influenced by race and gender—that is, filtered through the socially constructed categories of race and of male and female. In U.S. society, the system privileges whiteness over blackness. It reproduces racial and ethnic stereotypes about dark-skinned persons. It regulates interracial, interethnic sexual relationships. Through most of the 20th century, miscegenation laws prohibited sexual relations between whites and nonwhites, until these laws were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the late 1960s (Healey, 1995, p. 16).

Of race and the self, W. E. B. Du Bois (1903/1989), writing at the turn of the 20th century, observed, “The Negro is … born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world” (p. 4). Du Bois argues that the color line in the United States creates a sense of double-consciousness for the African American. This is a racial self that is always looking at itself “through the eyes of others” (p. 4). It is always measuring itself “by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (p. 4). Of this feeling, Du Bois notes, “One feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls … two warring ideals in one dark body” (p. 4). At the time he wrote, Du Bois felt that race was the greatest problem facing the United States—tha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• PART I THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGINATION
• PART II SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND LANGUAGE
• PART III CHILDHOOD SOCIALIZATION
• PART IV SELVES AND SOCIETIES
• Glossary
• References
• Index