Sorry I posted these questions so late in the week, but
we had one hell of an ice storm in Winston Salem, and
I'm just now getting it back together.
My class at wake is finishing up Joel Charon's
Symbolic Interactionism. Next week we start on
Goffman and the sociology of the absurd.
The important concepts that Charon introduces in the last third of his
text are: Action, Mind, Interaction, and Society. My emphasis in class
will be on the concept of interaction (Simmel is my main man), but I thought
I would ask some questions that will help you clarify your thinking on the
other three topics.
1) Charon, following from Mead, states that "Mind is action, action that
uses symbols, and directs these symbols towards the self." Despite the fact
that this is a horrible sentence grammatically, and could be better read as:
'Mind is symbolic action directed towards the self'" it contains several
important sociological ideas about "psychology." First is the idea of mind.
In this usage "mind" is not a thing, it is more akin to a verb.
(Mead discusses "minded behavior, which is to use the adjective form).
Given this, can somebody be "out of their mind," or "not in their
right mind?" How can this conception of mind be compared to
the psychological ideas of "personality" and "consciousness."
2) Human action is essentially the end result of "minded behavior."
How does the process work? The concepts you should be able to use here are:
mind, actor, action, and Meads four stages of the act (impulse,
perception, manipulation, and consummation).
3)Herbert Blumer once said "society is symbolic interaction."
What the hell does that mean?
Have a ball!
Jon