Sociology 1201: Week
Three
1.
2.
3.
Symbolic Interactionism
What Does Marriage Mean
Gender Roles and Contradictions
Sociology 1201
Symbolic Interactionism as a
sociological perspective
Our world is a social construction, built
through the web of social relationships
and meanings.
 We react to the meaning of social things
and not to the things themselves.
 Our self (selves?) in important part a
social construction

Sociology 1201
Charles Horton Cooley: Looking
glass self
“Society is an interweaving and interworking
of mental selves. I imagine your mind and
especially what your mind thinks about my
mind. I dress my mind before you and
expect that you will dress yours before
mine. Whoever cannot or will not do this
is not properly in the game.”
Sociology 1201
Primary Groups
Lewis Coser: “Sensitivity to the thought of
others, responsiveness to their attitudes,
values and judgments--that is the mark of
the mature man (or woman) according to
Cooley. This can be cultivated and
fostered only in the close and intimate
associations of the primary group.”
Sociology 1201
George Herbert Mead: the “me”
and the “I”
Mind, self and society
 Mind = my communication with myself
 Two parts to the self

– the “me”—very similar to Cooley’s looking
glass self
– The “I”—individual and unique part of me,
probably in part biological
Sociology 1201
Herbert Blumer’s synthesis
“Humans act toward a thing on the basis
of the meaning they assign to the thing.”
 “Meaning are socially derived, which is to
say that meaning is not inherent in a state
of nature…. Meaning is negotiated
through interaction with others.”
 “The perception and interpretation of
social symbols are modified by the
individual’s own thought process.”

Sociology 1201
Key concepts in the construction of
self and society
Culture: a design for living passed from
one generation to the next
 Norms: rules defining expected situations
and appropriate behaviors
 Socialization:

– 1. the process of learning the norms of your
culture
– 2. the process of learning who you are
Families particularly central to this process.
Sociology 1201
Sex and gender
Sex the biological distinction between
male and female
 Gender the culturally elaborated
distinction between masculine and
feminine… differs across culture and
across history
 Groups: “Because I am a Fe(male)

Sociology 1201
Gender Roles and Contradictions
“Betwixt and Between:” Interviews with middle
schoolers in a Southeastern city
 Research question: How Free Are Middle School
boys and girls to form identities outside the
constraining gender expectations that have
traditionally disadvantaged girls in the public
sphere and repressed boys from expressing their
emotions.
 GROUPS: 2 Discussion Questions

Sociology 1201
“Tweenagers”
What are the implications of that word?
Do you think it’s useful?
 Do peers become more important as a
reference group as we reach that middle
school age?
 Interviewed 44 middle schoolers who were
not yet teens (males and females)

Sociology 1201
Less lattitude for boys

Pascoe: “Multiple Masculinities (text, 547)
– “Fag discourse:” primary use (function) of
homophobia not to expose potential
homosexuals but to police boys behavior
Methods of this study: p. 344-46… the only
time I will quote at length in talking about the
article you were assigned to read… methods
particularly significant in sociology
Sociology 1201
Between Tomboy and Girly-Girl
Surprise (to me)… no one volunteered a
positive definition of a girly girl …most
common phrase ”prissy”—
 Yes when researchers asked explicitly
whether being a girly-girl was a good or
bad thing, kids were divided
 None of the girls identified themselves as
exclusivly “girly-girl”

Sociology 1201
Femininity
Some kids saw being girly as making a girl
popular
 The girls , black and white, felt that girls
should display some level of femininity
 Being too much of a tomboy also not a
good thing
 Variety by race: p. 351-352

Sociology 1201
Policing masculinity
Respondents described masculinity in very
narrow and uniform ways: spots,
competitiveness, video games, rowdiness
 “A boy who is perceived as feminine is
subject to much more ridicule than a girl
who is seen as either overly masculine or
overly feminine.” (Why? What does this
mean?)

Sociology 1201
Policing heterosexuality
What if a friend revealed he or she was
gay?
 How would your life change if you woke
up one day and found out you were gay?
34 students answered one or both
questions… majority very negative (“I
would be suicidal”), though also a
substantial minority (11) that expressed
tolerant views

Sociology 1201
Scenario in which a boy,
Marcus, becomes a cheerleader
Krista: “People think a male cheerleader is
always gay.”
 Dierdre: “If they’d been friends, she
wouldn’t stay close friends… If I hang
around with him, they’d be like, ‘ew,
you’re gay too.”
 Most kids told us their peers severely
tease gender nonconformity.

Sociology 1201
Sexuality and sex roles
“One male student told us that if he were
gay, he would no longer like sports.”
 Tendency to conflate sexuality and
femininity
 Some suggestive evidence that if a person
actually does embrace a gay identity, he
or she is freer to cross gender boundaries
and to enjoy activities limited to the other
sex.

Sociology 1201
Worse for boys than girls?
Jeffrey: No comparable world for boys
who act like girls the way tomboy
describes girls who act like boys.” Maybe
“fruit.”
 Instructor: Is tomboy really a negative?
“The stigmatizing of Marcus is in sharp
contrast to the hypothetical scenario about
Jasmine, the girl who wanted to start a
girls’ football team.”

Sociology 1201
What about Jo?
Mallory: “Jo is openly gay and friends with
half the seventh grade… though some
people hate him.”
 “Everybody knows Jo’s going to do
something like that (breaking the gender
rules), so nobody really cares…”
 Openly gay kids not harrassed the same
way for gender nonconformity.

Sociology 1201
People we know vs. hypothetical
people

“It is notable that all three examples of
exempting gays and lesbians from
sustained harassment in this study refer to
a specific person the respondent knew,
whereas the predictions of harassment
referred to hypothetical people.”
Sociology 1201
Boys vs girls again
“Our findings confirm other studies about
the narrow confines in which boys need to
stay to avoid being teased by their peers.”
 “What is perhaps more unexepcted is that
girls are now stigmatized for displaying
some of the traditional markers of
femininity.”

Sociology 1201
Deutsch: “Undoing gender”

A concept that thus far applies primarily to
girls. See quotes, pp. 358-359
Sociology 1201
“On the other hand…”
“Boys gain no social approval for deviating
from traditional definitions of masculinity.
Any behavior remotely stereotyped as
feminine is intensely policed by other boys
and by some girls.”
Last words: “Boys need a feminist revolution
of their own.”

Sociology 1201
What Marriage Means

Groups: Discussion questions for chapters
3 and 4 of Promises
– Trajectory: Courtship, birth, and ….
--What Marriage Means: a symbolic
interactionist analysis
Sociology 1201
Groups
Discussion: Questions from chapters 3 and
4 of Promises I Can Keep
 When you finish, attach the group
questions from each member of your
group to the group worksheet and turn it
in

Sociology 1201