Pragmatism and Social Interactionism

Abstract

It is argued that from the start interactionist sociologists were concerned with the problem of social order and sought new ways of conceptualizing social structure. Special emphasis is placed on the interactionists' predilection for a logic of inquiry sensitive to the objective indeterminacy of the situation. An argument is made that the failure of interactionist sociologists to address head-on the issues of power and inequality reflects not so much their uncritical reliance on pragmatism as their failure to follow consistently pragmatist tenets and to fulfill the political commitments of pragmatist philosophers. There is a solid consensus among present-day commentators about the profound impact of pragmatist philosophy on social interactionism. This consensus breaks down, however, when it comes to spelling out the exact nature of this impact. Some critics, mostly outside the interactionist perspective proper, charge interactionism with an astructural, subjectivist and status-quo bias and lay much