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This paper considers how the conversational aspects of design may be examined from perspectives associated with micro-sociology/social psychology: Symbolic Interactionism (SI) and Conversation Analysis (CA). Since many aspects of design involve face-to-face talk, this paper argues that an SI-informed CA offers an effective approach to understanding how communication and negotiation are central to design. Through analyzing excerpts of talk (an architect’s meeting with a client, and a design education critique) we can see how the collaborative nature of conversation contributes to understandings and assessments of objects. This discussion outlines how SI and CA can help delineate the processes that link the details of interaction to the wider social conditions and constraints that impact upon the practices and objects of design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the process-social structure controversy, concerning the relations of self to symbolic interactionism. Increasingly, knowledgeable scholars of self theory are gaining methodological insights, which support the fact that our conceptions of process and social structure are each incomplete, supplementary dimensions articulating the same phenomenal states of being and development. Just as self and society are "twin born", structure and process are analytically separable dimensions of self that, however, are not mutually reducible. Hence, the basis problem, attempted herein, is to expound dimensions of the symbolic interactionist perspective required for logically specifying and analyzing those psychological, social and situational conditions under which social structure and social process each exert their differential-- as well as their combined, simultaneous influences in determining consequences that self has for soical behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a microsociological study of a group of people who have undergone a threat experience. Within the combined theoretical frameworks of symbolic interactionism and phenomenology, the event is seen as a "reality shock" for its participants, involving cognitive crises in group and individual definitions of the situation. The after period is one in which procedures toward making the threat experience meaningful on both group and individual levels are instituted within group networks. These procedures on a group level involve the construction of a "real" event by the objectification of time and experience and through the emergence and attribution of post-hoc norms. Strategies toward the maintenance and continuity of identity include reconstruction of the threat situation, of other participants' behavior, of post-hoc norms, or of individual behavior, and the negotiation of identity on these various bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the concept of radical conversion of sell-identity as a moral career. Following the theoretical orientation of symbolic interactionism, the concept is explicated and differentiated from other forms of sell-change. A critical review of the model developed by Lofland in Doomsday Cult is offered, through which a revised statement of the sequences of radical conversion that is conceptually applicable to cases of diverse content is constructed. Lastly, the revised model is tested using secondary case material and the logic of analytic induction. The findings indicate the model is consistent with the empirical descriptions contained in each case. Suggestions for further analysis are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents Peter M. Hall's response to Rosabeth Moss Kanter's comments toward his article "A Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of Politics," published in the 1972 issue of "Sociological Inquiry." The author concludes that Kanter misunderstands his perspective by subsuming it under American liberalism. If there is anything that he is not, it is an American liberal, and if there is anything he is criticizing in American sociology, political sociology, and symbolic interaction, it is consensual, pluralistic, and liberal bias. Hall also does not deny the need to see the totality of the society, its interdependencies, feedbacks, and impacts, in short, society as a system. To settle misconceptions, Hall emphasized that his paper had a special focus and set limits as to its goals and coverage. It was not intended to be a complete analysis of politics nor a complete analysis of American politics.