WEEK No. (9)- Ninth Lecture-2023- Selected Texts from Social Theories

Symbolic Interactionism.

A school or movement within US sociology dating from the early-middle of the 20th century, symbolic interactionism derives its name from its dual emphases. It is 'symbolic' because such work focuses on the meanings that social situations have for the actors involved and it is 'interactionist' because meanings are seen to be shaped by interactions between actors. Symbolic Interactionism, is the first and most distinctively American sociological theory. It is a perspective on social life that is now more than sixty years old. Symbolic interactionism is clearly linked to American intellectual traditions.

Founders of Interactionism

Analysis of the self has always been central to interactionist sociology. The writings of Blumer , Cooley , Mead, Goffman, and other founders of interactionism highlight the social nature of the self. As noted by these theorists, the self emerges, develops and is sustained through processes of social interaction.

idea of "the survival of the fittest"

Applying the idea of "the survival of the fittest" to society, politics, and economics, social Darwinists argue that the wealthy or strong succeed under conditions of fair competition because they are better adapted to their environments, and that the poor or weak therefore have no legitimate claim to government protection.

critical point of symbolic interactionism

As a theoretical perspective, symbolic interactionism came to be criticised for paying too little attention to social structure and to the limits of actors' ability to negotiate the meaning of situations. Ethnomethodology took up the key insights of symbolic interactionism but developed them into a distinctive outlook that focused on detailing everyday actors' own social skills and interactional abilities.

Dewey's reflective thinking Sequence

Building upon Dewey's fundamental ideas, Mead developed a profoundly sociological account of human consciousness, selfhood and behavior—an account he conveyed in a series of social psychology lectures that became the basis for his best-known book, Mind, Self, and Society (1934).

Principle of Social Darwinism

Despite the name, Social Darwinism is most closely associated with the work of Herbert Spencer, one of the founders of sociology, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" nine years before the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859).

Demographic Transition Theory

Developed by several demographers during the 1920s, the demographic transition theory stands as an important alternative to Malthusian notions of population growth. Essentially, this is a model of a society's fertility (birth rate [BR]), mortality (death rate [DR]), and natural population growth rate (NGR).

Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism

Herbert Spencer developed the social implications that many assumed were implicit in evolutionary biology and attempted to build the principles of evolution into coherent theory encompassing biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics. We now think of social evolution as an extension of biology but the idea of evolution was popular in the intellectual fields in the mid-19th century.

Social Darwinism

Named after the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-92), Darwinism is the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Social Darwinism is the theory that human societies follow the same process of natural selection that Charles Darwin identified in the natural world. Those members of a species best suited to their environment survive and reproduce; those least suited die.

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931),

One of the pioneers of this theory, derived his greatest inspiration, however, from the philosophical works of John Dewey (1922, 1925), his colleague at the University of Chicago.

Critic to Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism was especially popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It had strong proponents on both sides of the Atlantic—most notably, Herbert Spencer in England and William Graham Sumner in America—it was particularly influential in America where it was used to justify laissez-faire economics during the Gilded Age. However. Social Darwinism was abandoned by modern social science because it became obvious that there was no scientific basis for ranking certain individuals, classes or races as innately superior to others.

Analysis of book, Mind, Self, and Society.

The self is not present at birth nor is it an inevitable consequence of a person's biological development. Rather, an individual must learn who he or she is through interacting with others. Through these interactions a person comes to believe that he or she has a distinct and meaningful self. Put another way, an individual's 'self develops out of his or her social relationships.

meaning of demographic transition

The term demographic transition describes a series of radical transformations in the conditions of human life that started over 200 years ago and which continue today. This Theory discusses the process of the demographic transition in developed and developing societies, evaluates its claim to be a theory, and describes other transitions in demography

Importance of Demographic Transition Theory

The theory signifies a particular combination of population changes associated with the shift from agrarian to industrial society. Agrarian societies typically have high birth and death rates; that infant mortality is high and adults die young is balanced by largely unrestricted fertility. In the early phase of industrialisation, death rates fell but birth rates remained high and population grew rapidly. Finally, birth rates fell to restore the balance