History
Symbolic interactionism (SI), a phrase coined by Herbert Blumer as early as 1937, was derived from lectures of early philosophy and sociologist theorist George Herbert Mead’s student notes. Mead’s notes from a course he taught in social psychology were posthumously transcribed into the book Mind, Self, and Society; 1934. Mead, born in 1863, arguably laid the foundation for the symbolic interactionism concept of how the individual mind arises out of the social process. Mead’s description of language as communication through significant symbols and concepts of “me” and “I” are examples of his contributions to symbolic behavior perspective. Symbolic behavior perspective stems from symbolic interactionism perspective. Blumer (1962) summarizes the perspective as how people act towards things based on the meaning those things have for them. These meanings are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation. The symbolic interactionism perspective relates to the organization by describing how employees form a concept of self in relationship to their organization as they interact with individuals, subordinates, and superiors within the organizational architecture. Individuals learn appropriate behavior within an organization as the code of values, roles, attitudes, and norms of behavior of that work environment become apparent (Wood, 1999).
Read more about this topic: Symbolic Behavior
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... that there is no other way,
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
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the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)