Table Of ContentCritical and Cultural Interactionism
One of the longest standing traditions in sociology, interactionism is concerned
with studying human interaction and showing how society to a large part is
constituted by patterns of interaction. In spite of the work of figures such as
Robert E. Park, Everett C. Hughes, Erving Goffman, Herbert Blumer, Norman
K. Denzin and Gary Alan Fine, interactionism – perhaps owing to its association
with the perspective of symbolic interactionism – remains something of an odd
man out in mainstream sociology. This book seeks to rectify this apparent neglect
by bringing together critical social theories and microsociological approaches to
research, thus revealing the critical and cultural potentials in interactionism – the
chapters arguing that far from being oriented towards the status quo, interactionism
in fact contains a critical and cultural edge. Presenting the latest work from some
of the leading figures in interactionist thought to show recent developments in the
field and offer an overview of some of the most potent and prominent ideas within
critical and cultural criminology, Critical and Cultural Interactionism will appeal
to scholars of sociology with interests in interactionism, social theory research
methods and criminology.
Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University,
Denmark. He is the co-author of The Social Thought of Erving Goffman, the editor
of Postmortal Society; Deconstructing Death; The Poetics of Crime; and Beyond
Bauman: Creative Excursions and Critical Engagements, and the co-editor of The
Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman; Encountering the Everyday; The Transformation
of Modernity; Utopia: Social Theory and the Future; Imaginative Methodologies:
The Poetic Imagination in the Social Sciences; and Liquid Criminology.
Classical and Contemporary Social Theory
Stjepan G. Mestrovic
Texas A&M University, USA
Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that
re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the
enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a
broad sense, inviting contributions on both ‘classical’ and modern theory, thus encompass-
ing sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the
social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular
issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribu-
tion of a theorist or school to our understanding of it.
The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, com-
parative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in rela-
tion to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome
that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number
of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandings of
social issues and contexts.
Titles in this series
Updating Charles H. Cooley
Contemporary Perspectives on a Sociological Classic
Edited by Natalia Ruiz-Junco and Baptiste Brossard
Freud as a Social and Cultural Theorist
On Human Nature and the Civilizing Process
Howard L. Kaye
From the Peaceable to the Barbaric
Thorstein Veblen and the Charro Cowboy
Beatriz Aldana Marquez
Morality Made Visible
Edward Westermarck’s Moral and Social Theory
Otto Pipatti
Critical and Cultural Interactionism
Insights from Sociology and Criminology
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/
series/ASHSER1383
Critical and Cultural
Interactionism
Insights from Sociology and Criminology
Edited by
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Michael Hviid Jacobsen individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Michael Hviid Jacobsen to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jacobsen, Michael Hviid, 1971- author.
Title: Critical and cultural interactionism: insights from sociology and
criminology/Michael Hviid Jacobsen.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018056216 (print) | LCCN 2018060784 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781315141640 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781138306233 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Symbolic interactionism. | Social interaction. |
Sociology. | Criminology.
Classification: LCC HM499 (ebook) | LCC HM499 .J33 2019 (print) |
DDC 302—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056216
ISBN: 978-1-138-30623-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-14164-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
List of contributors vii
Preface and acknowledgements ix
Introduction: the coming of critical and cultural interactionisms 1
MICHAEL HVIID JACOBSEN
1 Misgivings about Goffman: social structure, power
and politics in the work of Erving Goffman 12
GREG SMITH AND MICHAEL HVIID JACOBSEN
2 Upscaling Goffman: four principles of neostructural
interactionism 30
MICHAEL L. SCHWALBE
3 A call to a critical interpretive interactionism 45
NORMAN K. DENZIN
4 Dramaturgical interactionism: ideas of self-presentation,
impression management and the staging of social life as a
catapult for critique 61
MICHAEL HVIID JACOBSEN AND SØREN KRISTIANSEN
5 Critical interactionism: a theoretical bridge for
understanding complex human conditions 79
PATRICIA M. BURBANK AND DIANE C. MARTINS
6 Pacifism, gender and symbolic interactionism 99
MARY JO DEEGAN
vi Contents
7 Towards a feminist symbolic interactionism 119
SHERRYL KLEINMAN AND EMILY R. CABANISS
8 An invitation to ‘radical interactionism’:
towards a reorientation of interactionist sociology? 138
MICHAEL HVIID JACOBSEN AND CAROLINE JOAN S. PICART
9 Symbolic interactionism and the Frankfurt School:
a critical appraisal 164
LAUREN LANGMAN
10 Situational analysis as a critical interactionist method 189
ADELE E. CLARKE
11 Cultural criminology and its incitement for symbolic
interactionism: transgression, marginalisation, resistance
and media in the wider context of power and culture of
late modernity 210
THADDEUS MÜLLER
Index 229
Contributors
Patricia M. Burbank is Professor of Nursing at the College of Nursing, University
of Rhode Island, Kingston, United States. Her research interests include the
following topics: nutrition and exercise behaviour change, fall prevention, cor-
relates of gait parameters, testing technological innovations, prevention and
reversal of diabetes, and health of LGBT older adults.
Emily R. Cabaniss is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Sam
Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, United States. She studies the
social psychology of migration, inequality and social change.
Adele E. Clarke is Professor Emerita of Sociology & History of Health
Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, United States. Her
research interests include qualitative inquiry; and science, technology and
medicine studies.
Mary Jo Deegan is the founding director of the Jane Addams Research Center
and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
United States. She has published over 200 articles, essays and reviews, and
written or edited 22 books. She is an international lecturer on nonviolence,
feminism, pragmatism, education and democracy.
Norman K. Denzin is Distinguished Professor of Communications and Research
Professor of Communications, Cinema Studies, Sociology, Criticism and
Interpretive Theory at the Sociology Department, University of Illinois, United
States. His academic interests include interpretive theory; performance studies;
qualitative research methodology; and the study of media, culture and society.
Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology
and Social Work, Aalborg University, Denmark. He has written, edited or
co-edited more than 50 books. His research interest includes the following
topics: crime, microsociology, social theory, qualitative research methodology
and ethnography, death and dying, palliative care, deviance and utopia.
Sherryl Kleinman is Professor Emerita at the Department of Sociology,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, United States. She writes feminist
sociology, memoir and poetry.
viii Contributors
Søren Kristiansen is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean at the Faculty of
the Social Sciences at Aalborg University, Denmark. His current research pro-
jects focus on gambling with a special focus on online simulated gambling and
the relationships between gambling behaviour and the role of social contexts.
He has published widely on a range of issues, including deviance, research
methods, research ethics, social problems and social policy.
Lauren Langman is Professor of Sociology at Loyola University of Chicago,
United States. His primary interests are social structure and subjectivity, con-
cerns pioneered by the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. He has used this
prospective to look at identity, alienation, national character, the body and
various social movements left or right.
Diane C. Martins is Professor of Nursing at the College of Nursing, University
of Rhode Island, Kingston, United States. Her research interests include the
following topics: health care experiences of the homeless population, hunger
and food insecurity for the homeless, social theory, experiences of older adults
and immigration, and global health experiences for nurses.
Thaddeus Müller is Senior Lecturer at the Lancaster University Law School,
Criminology, United Kingdom. His research interest includes the following
topics: immigrant youth; urban sociology; the warm city; drugs and drug
policy; qualitative research; academic fraud; resisting stigma; moral entre-
preneurship; and transgression in sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll (from Lou Reed
to Amy Winehouse).
Caroline Joan S. Picart is Attorney at Law and Adjunct Professor of
Law, Florida A&M University, Orlando, United States. She is editor of
the Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series on Law, Culture & the
Humanities. Her research interests include law and crime; terrorism; law,
culture and the humanities; qualitative research methodology and ethnog-
raphy; criminology and popular culture; sociology/rhetoric of science; and
intellectual property law.
Michael L. Schwalbe is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology, North Carolina State University, United States. His research
interests include gender, life history, and the reproduction of inequality.
Greg Smith is Professor of Sociology in the School of Health & Society at the
University of Salford, United Kingdom. He has published several dozen arti-
cles and chapters, and authored or edited six books. His main interests are in
cultural and social theory, methods and methodology, restorative justice, soci-
ologies of interaction, and visual sociology.
Preface and acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to furthering the continued development and relevance
of interactionism in sociology and beyond. By now, interactionist sociology
has been around for quite some time, fertilising the soil for multiple theoretical
developments, methodological advances and empirical investigations into almost
every nook and cranny of social life. One might provocatively claim that inter-
actionism has itself now reached the status of one of the stalwart and longstand-
ing perspectives of sociology. However, there is still need for interactionism to
continue to engage in critical dialogue not only with its theoretical counterparts
but also with itself.
This book is about what is called ‘critical and cultural interactionism’. One
could insist on creating the initialism of CCI in order to capture, specify and
officially label this perspective (just as ‘symbolic interactionism’ is convention-
ally abbreviated as SI), was it not for the imminent risk of thereby reifying or
formalising what this book covers. The concept of critical and cultural interac-
tionism (CCI), just as the notion of symbolic interactionism is simply, in Herbert
Blumer’s memorable words, a ‘somewhat barbaric neologism’, and there is no
point in trying to create a specific ‘school of thought’, ‘paradigm’ or ‘research
tradition’ by the name of CCI. No attempt is therefore made with this book to
monopolise or narrow down these terms, but the book offers some suggestions
for some of the many variations and incarnations that such critically and cultur-
ally oriented interactionist ideas may take. The purpose of the book is therefore
to open the treasure trove of interactionist ideas in order to facilitate a critical
discussion of how interactionism may proceed from here, rather than narrowing
or closing down the potential incarnations of interactionist sociology. All the con-
tributions included in the book share a sympathetic devotion to interactionism, but
they all also venture into critiquing, discussing, provoking and thereby expanding
the interactionist imagination.
This book is the outcome of a relatively long and winding process of locat-
ing and persuading contributors who in one way or the other identify themselves
with the notion of critical or cultural interactionism. I want to thank all those
who eventually contributed to the book with thought-provoking ideas and per-
spectives. As always, I also want to extend my gratitude to my two editors at
Routledge, Neil Jordan and Alice Salt, for supporting me in the endeavour to
