SOCIAL INTERACTION
The Microlevel Perspective
• Social Interaction defined: “the process
by which people act toward or respond to
other people and is the foundation for all
relationships and groups in society”
Social Interaction and Meaning
• Social interaction within a given society is based
on shared meanings, common expectations, of
behaviors across situations.
▫ Civil inattention: that we show awareness that
others are near us but we do not make them an
object of special attention (p. 140)
▫ Interaction order: interaction does have a
pattern which regulates the form and processes
but not the content (p. 140)
5-4
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Social Construction of Reality
• Defined: the process by which our perception
of reality is shaped largely by the subjective
meaning that we give to an experience (p.141)
• Theory: we act on the reality as we see it and
not necessarily as it is—the definition of the
situation
Social Construction of Reality
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: a false belief or
prediction that produces behaviour that makes
the originally false belief come true
• Example: If a person is told repeatedly that he or
she is not a good student, they might eventually
believe it to be true and stop studying for tests
and completing assignments
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
• One may ask the question of how are we to act in
a specific situation?
• Garfinkel’s concept, ethnomethodology,
provides an answer.
• Defined: the study of the commonsense
knowledge that people use to understand the
situations in which they find themselves
ETHNOMETHODOLOGY:
Questions to think about…
• What are “background expectancies”?
▫ Why are they important?
▫ Can you think of any?
• What does this contribute to our knowledge of
interaction?