Symbolic Interactionism And Ethnomethodology

Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnomethodology, has a lot of similarities relating to the social aspects and their approaches. However, their sociological perspective is definitely what separates them both. Symbolic interactionism derived from the works of George Herbert Mead. Symbolic interactionism takes a minor view of society, it mainly focuses on a micro scale perspective of interactions, like when individuals are in small groups socializing with friends other than looking at things from a macro level with humongous structures like education or the governing rules set by the government. Mead main priority was evaluating societies, he explained, “At the most general level, he uses the term society to mean that ongoing social process that precede both the mind and the self. Given its importance in shaping the mind and self, society is clearly of central importance to Mead.”
This means that children are not born with a self, but as they grow older they eventually start to emerge over time.” This shows that eventually, ones meaning can change throughout their everyday life with experiences as they go. David R. Maines did a review on the symbolic interactionism theory, and was very confuse about meads way of analysis on society and the self. David examine mead theory and explained “ When I ask myself whether if I would advise someone who knew nothing about symbolic interactionism to read this book as representative of the of the perspective, my answer is both yes and no. Yes, is what usually gets passed off, as symbolic interactionism is a concern? Yes, if a reasonably accurate account of the central ideas and scholars is to be communicated. But no, if the diversity of symbolic interactionism is the issue and definitely no if the recent developments in the perspective were regarded as important.” (149) This was said mainly because of social interaction, what other people label you as, its what you eventually start to believe and label your self as well whether it is negative or
This is very interesting because Symbolic Interactionism almost has the same views, with society basically making an individual, just Ethnomethodology acts more upon common sense knowledge, which means things you should already know of and not wait for society to teach you. An article explained that ethnomethodology was seen in three different ways one was the way people construct meaning or definition of situation, the second was how people bring forward sense making of perceptions and perspective and finally its known to be critique of traditional values when it comes to sociology.( Douglas W. Maynard and Steven E.