The British Journal of Sociology 2005 Volume 56 Issue 2

Symbolic interactionism and the concept of power

Alex Dennis and Peter J. Martin

Abstract
Symbolic interactionism is often represented as a perspective which is limited by
its restriction to micro aspects of social organization. As such, it is allegedly
unable to adequately conceptualize macro phenomena such as social structure,
patterns of inequality, and power. Such a view is routinely presented in undergraduate textbooks. This paper contests such a view through a consideration of
the concept of power. We argue that the interactionist research tradition does show
a fundamental concern with power phenomena, and that a reconsideration of the
concept is timely in light of theoretical developments in sociology more generally.
An increasing concern with the analysis of culture, the continuing influence of
Foucault, the development of feminist perspectives, and the emerging consensus
around neo-Weberian thought have all contributed to a renewal of interest in
themes long ago explored by interactionists. As examples we suggest that interactionist studies in the fields of deviance and education have been concerned
above all with the authoritative imposition of consequential identities, i.e., with
the social processes through which power is enacted and institutionalized in real
situations. Such developments have led some to argue that interactionism has now
been incorporated into the mainstream of sociology. We conclude, however, by
arguing that such a view runs the risk of granting to orthodox sociological thought
a legitimacy which is analytically unwarranted, and which fails to recognize the
alternative theoretical and philosophical foundations of symbolic interactionist
thought.
Keywords: Power;
structure/agency

social

theory;

symbolic

interactionism;

micro/macro;

Introduction
The impetus to write this paper derives in part from an experience one of us
had while acting as an external examiner for a course on sociological theory.
Students were required to write two essays during their examination, and one

Dennis (School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History, University of Salford) and Martin (School of Social
Sciences, University of Manchester) (Corresponding author em: a.j.dennis@salford.ac.uk)
London School of Economics and Political Science 2005 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2005.00055.x

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of them one of the best, in fact chose to answer questions on symbolic

interactionism (henceforth SI) and Foucault. The first answer made some alltoo-familiar points: interactionist work, it was said, had produced some fine
ethnographic studies and a detailed understanding of the face-to-face, microlevel aspects of social life, but it was ultimately flawed because of its inability
to deal with macro-level social processes and, in particular, the major questions to do with social structure and power. In the second answer Foucault was
hailed as a great social theorist, who had not only shown the importance of
culture and the body for sociology, but who had revealed the ways in which
power and social structure have to be understood as yes, youve guessed
it enacted by real individuals in the ongoing processes of everyday life.
Foucault even talks of the microphysics (McNay 1994: 3) of power, and was
concerned with the ways in which power is imbricated in all social relations,
discourses and institutions (Westwood 2002: 135). In general, then, much of
Foucaults widespread influence derives from his explorations of the ways in
which the everyday practices of individuals and groups are co-ordinated so as
to produce, perpetuate, and delimit what people can think, do and be (Dreyfus
2003: 32; see also Mills 2003: 34).
It would have been quite wrong, however, to blame our student for the
inconsistency between his two answers. He was, after all, only reproducing
(in a very competent way) ideas which are well-entrenched in sociology
textbooks. The best selling British textbook of the 1980s was Haralambos
Sociology, which described interactionism as an approach that concentrated
on particular situations and encounters with little reference to the historical
events which led up to them or the wider social framework in which they
occur (Haralambos 1980: 551). There follows approval for the contention
that interactionism consistently fails to give an account of social structure
(Haralambos 1980: 551). It is further claimed that interactionism fails to
explain the source of social meanings: these are not spontaneously generated
in interaction situations. Instead they are systematically generated by the
social structure (Haralambos 1980: 552).1 In a similar manner, Giddens, as
recently as 1997, suggests that symbolic interactionism is open to the criticism
that it concentrates too much on the small-scale. Symbolic interactionists have
always found difficulty in dealing with more large-scale structures and
processes (Giddens 1997: 565). Other authors wish to emphasize this distinction almost invariably treated as unproblematic between small-scale and
large-scale social processes. For Macionis and Plummer (1997: 22), the distinction between macro and micro is an important one in sociology and it
appears in a number of guises. They go on to assess SIs contribution to studies
of education as follows:
Symbolic interactionism highlights how relations between teachers and students, and between students themselves, both affect and are affected by the
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schooling process. This approach, however, tends to under-emphasize the

relations between activities within schools and the functioning of society as
a whole. (Macionis and Plummer 1997: 537)
A more recent example, dealing with the sociology of health, is even more
explicit in its understanding of SI:
In summary, the interactionist approach focuses on power relations in the
construction and management of health and illness. It draws attention to
the unequal distribution of the resources available to health practitioners
and patients, whether in home visits, in the surgery, at the outpatient clinic
or on hospital wards. However, interactionism offers neither a theory of
power nor a theory of patterns of inequality. Rather, it explains power
and inequality as functions of the relative strength of the personalities of
the parties to the medical encounter. We have to turn to other approaches
to provide a theoretical explanation of such inequality. (Bilton, et al.
2002: 362)
Bilton, et al. provide quite literally a textbook instance of the way in which
SI has generally been presented to students. For these authors:
. . . social structures are neglected. In a typical SI account, social institutions
are acknowledged as a backdrop to interaction, but social systems and their
related structures of economic and political power have only a shadowy
existence. Certainly, the claim that social life consists solely of actors definitions is not sustainable. (Bilton, et al. 2002: 504)
Whats more, such widespread and long-recognized misrepresentations of SI
can be found in the sociological literature more generally. During the 1970s,
indeed, authors appeared to be queuing up to represent interactionist perspectives in this way. In retrospect, it is of some interest that the presidents of
both the American and British Sociological Associations made outspoken
attacks on what the former saw as an orgy of subjectivism (Coser 1975: 698)
and the latter saw as a denuded version of sociology: symbolic interactionists and ethnomethodologists, in particular, have no explicit conceptualization
of the supra-situational, or social structure or culture as societal phenomena
(Worsley 1973: 9). Following these sort of leads, Meltzer, Petras and Reynolds
(1975: 106 ff ) took the astructural bias of SI to be its most fundamental weakness, while Giddens worried that the demise of structural-functionalism as a
dominant paradigm in the late 1960s had led to a retreat from institutional
analysis and a preoccupation with the triviata [sic] of everyday life,
whereby the individual shapes his [sic] phenomenal experience of social
reality. The result, said Giddens, could rationalize a withdrawal from basic
issues involved in the study of macro-structural social forms and social
processes (Giddens 1973: 15).
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The general theme which emerges from these, and many other, discussions
is that SI cannot adequately take account of the phenomena of power and
social structure, and that it necessarily leads to a neglect of institutional analysis. Neglect of these matters, it was (and is) argued, would amount to nothing
less than an abandonment of some of the central themes of sociology. In fact,
we share this view: the cultural complexities of power, institutions and social
structure are indeed fundamental objects of sociological concern. We acknowledge, too, that the critics were concerned with a variety of what they took to
be microsociologies, and not only SI. What we wish to reject, though, specifically and emphatically, is the characterization of SI as an approach which
does not, or cannot, provide an understanding of these phenomena, and with
it the misrepresentation and misunderstanding what Maines has called the
mythic facts and reconstructive legitimacies (2001: 249) concerning SI
which, for whatever reasons, have become established in the secondary literature. In the remainder of this paper, therefore, it is this general theme which
we will develop, with particular reference to the concept of power.

Dualistic incorporation
The persistence of these misrepresentations is all the more perplexing since
there are clear indications that by the 1980s a degree of reorientation was
taking place. By this time (the very same) Giddens was writing about the need
to develop an adequate account of the nature of human agents and the ways
in which meaning is produced and sustained through the use of methodological devices in social interaction (Giddens 1987: 2145). Indeed, a number of
developments combined to move the sociological discourse away from a
primary concern with structural phenomena. The Marxism which had been
in vogue in the 1970s was itself in (terminal?) decline, giving way to a growing
consensus around neo-Weberian themes, so bringing the social actor and
processes of interpretation back into analytical focus. There was also, as we
have mentioned, the remarkable rise of Foucault as a figure of enormous influence, not least for the way in which reactions to his work revived debates about
matters of structure and agency. The development of cultural and media
studies led to renewed interest in the construction of symbolic worlds, and
processes of representation more generally. Influential, too, were feminist
thinkers, as they developed themes like the gendered nature of discourses and
the ways in which macro sociological phenomena such as the reproduction
of patriarchy had to be understood in terms of everyday activities and experiences (e.g., Smith 1988). The various strands of postmodernist thought also
emphasized themes long established in the interactionist tradition, such as the
inadequacies of grand narratives as all-encompassing accounts of history and
social life, the idea of the social constitution of personal identity, and so on.
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In all these and other ways, then, sociological work over the last twenty years
or so has increasingly involved an engagement with themes that were central
to the SI tradition. Yet, as we have seen, that tradition itself has simultaneously been subject to persistent misrepresentation in both sociology textbooks
and the professional arena, leading to the situation which David Maines has
described as the faultline of consciousness the paradox that in America:
. . . sociologists over the years have learned a way of talking about themselves and their discipline . . . that has compartmentalized interactionist
work and relegated it to the margins of scholarly consideration while simultaneously and unknowingly becoming more interactionist in their work.
(Maines 2001: xv)
Similarly, Gary Alan Fine (1993) has written of interactionisms simultaneous
sad demise, mysterious disappearance and glorious triumph in the sense that,
while the central themes and core concepts of interactionism have now been
accepted by much mainstream sociology, the perspective itself, as a scholarly
movement, is fragmented and often invisible.
For both Maines and Fine, then, the accommodation between interactionism and mainstream sociology has come about largely through the absorption
of the former by the latter, and we would argue further that the various theoretical movements mentioned above have been instrumental in bringing
about significant reorientations in sociological thought. However, there is an
alternative account of the relations between interactionism and general sociology, which places more emphasis on some of the ways in which the interactionist tradition has itself been reconstituted in recent years and, in particular,
has begun to confront some of the sociological big issues of inequality, social
structure, power, and so on.
This was certainly the view of Musolf (1992), who discussed the new directions which he took to be emerging in SI work in relation to British cultural
studies, and the converging concerns of both with structure, institutions, power
and ideology. For Musolf (and others), interactionism itself was changing
emancipating itself from a preoccupation with interpersonal encounters and
situations, and beginning to explore the links between such microsociological
communication processes and macrosociological community structures
(Musolf 1992: 172). In so doing, new interactionist work has responded positively to the charge that the perspective suffers from an astructural bias, utilizing an expanded view of power and ideology to develop a new critical SI
perspective (Musolf 1992: 173).
Yet there is an ambivalence in this way of representing the interactionist
tradition for, in rightly drawing attention to the wider sociological significance
of some interactionist work, Musolf appears to accept the charge of astructural
bias in interactionism and its alleged inability to deal with macro issues of
power and so on (Musolf 1992: 185). Once again, it should be clear that our
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purpose in this paper is to resist this implication. We will suggest, firstly, that
far from neglecting such matters as power and social structure, studies in the
interactionist tradition have in fact investigated them, but in ways which reflect
the fundamental premises of that tradition, and in particular its pragmatist orientation to the analysis of social life.2 Secondly, and following on from this, we
contend that much misunderstanding and misrepresentation of interactionism
arises from the fact that the very concepts invoked in the debate power,
social structure, and so on are themselves drawn from, and are constitutive
of, a macrosociological discourse which is incompatible with the underlying
premises of interactionism. Thus, the incorporation or assimilation of interactionism into mainstream sociology is inherently problematic potentially furnishing conventional sociology with an unwarranted analytical legitimacy, and
obscuring the basic philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of classical
SI research.
To validate their status as sociologists, interactionists have all to often been
expected to demonstrate their ability to contribute to sociological work
where the nature of the sociological is something constituted outside their
own theoretical schema. Just what counts as sociological is something that
has rarely been defined by interactionists in their own terms, but presupposed
or presented from outside as a fait accompli. The implications of this for the
study of power, as we will see, are enormous. Any studys academic relevance
depends on its disciplinary location: ideally, it should address a theoretical
debate or problem but, regardless of whether it does this or not, its rationale
must, at least, be derived from disciplinary issues. Recent attempts to demonstrate the relevance of and rationale for undertaking interactionist studies of
power, however, seem increasingly detached from what we take to be a specifically interactionist theoretical account of the nature of power relations. The
rationale for studying power is, at best, derived from mainstream approaches
(which are, as we will see, often alien to the interactionist perspective) or, worryingly, based simply on the notion that power is what sociologists study.
Interactionists, then, face a dilemma. Power, apparently, has to be treated as
a thing, a topic in its own right, for studies to deal with it in ways acceptable
to mainstream sociology. But in order to do this, they must downplay their
own traditions approach to what power might be and how it might be investigated: interactionist studies of power dont look like conventional studies of
power, so they cant be studies of power and so they must change, or at least
demonstrate their relevance to the mainstream (see, for instance, Prus 1999,
on this point). Power, here, is something more than such cognate concepts and
phenomena as legitimation and interpersonal influence and, so, cannot be
addressed adequately through their analysis alone.
If finding a mainstream warrant for interactionist studies is the issue at hand,
we believe, this problem emerges as a result of existing dualisms within the
mainstream rather than from the supposed dialectic between mainstream
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and interactionist. This latter opposition is something that comes after.

The terms of reference are set by the mainstream, and working out interactionist positions in the field of enquiry is a problem to be solved after mainstream sociologys theoretical debates have been resolved (or at least made
to go away). Sociologys theoretical perspectives and positions are defined on
the basis of their location on continua of micromacro, structureagency,
voluntarismdeterminism, individualismcollectivism and so on as a function
of their mainstream status: where interactionism fits in with the discipline
is seldom treated as something independent of these pre-existing positions.
This has two effects: firstly, it makes interactionist studies out to be atheoretical collections of stuff that happens things that people do (at best) or
behaviours (in an unfortunately more behaviourist idiom). The relevance of
interactionist studies, therefore, depends crucially on who is being studied and
what their role in the social structure is. Furthermore, the legitimizing rationale
for interactionist studies becomes the way in which they may be taken to complement mainstream work, and to ground existing ways of theorizing more
effectively. Thus, again, Prus (1999: chapter 7) argues that ethnographic and
interactionist studies of the specific arenas in which power relations inhere and
are elaborated (such as government agencies, the military, the media, etc.) are
legitimate as studies of power as a thing and in relation to the groundings
and empirical fleshing out of mainstream understandings of how those settings
relate to others as parts of the social structure. Prus is forced into this
dilemma of seeing power as both a thing and a characteristic aspect of
diverse human relationships by his desire to reconcile interactionist and
mainstream sociology. It is difficult to see how such a dilemma can be avoided
when taking this as the rationale for theoretical work.
In an ironic contrast to the Foucauldian approach to power which construes it as a ubiquitous feature of human activities a tendency is developing to use interactionist empirical work to shore up a macrosociological view
of power being something that stably inheres in particular structural settings.
The interactionist study of power becomes a programme for conducting ethnographic studies of those settings the places where power inheres. Interactionism can study those people and so ensure that the statements made (by
others) about power are empirically grounded and not merely the outcomes
of abstract theorizing. This, however, of course, still presupposes that power is
something capable of being studied in its own right as a thing. Just where
it resides and how it manifests itself are not to be ascertained through empirical investigation, but rather theoretically presupposed providing investigations with an unquestioned (and unquestionable) agenda.
Within the limitations of this paper, it is impossible to present an account
of the whole range of SI studies in all their variety and richness. To provide a
substantial grounding for the basic argument that far from neglecting the
phenomena of power, much interactionist work is actually about power
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relations and their enactment would require a much more extensive treatment. In the present context, we will simply present some material from two
of the central areas of interactionist research, deviance and education, which
serves to illustrate this theme.

Studies in the sociology of deviance

Research on deviance is perhaps the best-known area of interactionist work,
particularly following the enormous success of Beckers Outsiders after its
original publication in 1963. Much of this work has been influential, leading
to a greater appreciation of the perspective of the deviant, the marginalized,
the stigmatized, the excluded and disadvantaged, and from time to time such
studies have contributed to political and institutional reforms. Becker himself
has written of the underdog orientation of much of these studies (Becker
1967). Yet the focus on the responses both individual and collective of
those who are labelled in various ways has all too often served to obscure
the primary, and we would argue more fundamental, concern of interactionist
studies with the authoritative processes through which individuals are rendered subordinate through legally sanctioned and institutionally established
procedures.
Indeed, the interactionist approach to deviance develops, in a more sociologically satisfying way, Durkheims ideas about the ways in which laws and
normative patterns are culturally variable (Durkheim 1984). Whereas
Durkheim saw crime in terms of those acts which offend the basic values or
collective sentiments of a society or group, however, the interactionists
sought to avoid the reification of society which is inevitable in this kind of
formulation. Their focus, instead, was on the ways in which actual rules are
established, enforced, challenged and broken, usually in situations where cultural consensus cannot be assumed. Thus, for example, Lemert examined the
essentially political process through which laws were enacted in an urban,
stratified and culturally diverse setting, concluding that where those conditions
obtain:
laws and rules represent no groups values nor values of any portion of a
society. Instead they are artefacts of compromise between the values of
mutually opposed, but very strongly organized, associations. (Lemert 1972:
57)
The implications are clear: the classification of conduct as, for example, legal
or illegal is (as Durkheim would surely have agreed) a matter of definition,
but such definitions emerge through processes of conflict or negotiation
among contending parties. On this point the interactionist perspective has
much in common with Webers image of the social order emerging out of a
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perpetual process of conflict (Hughes, Sharrock and Martin 2003: 106; Collins
1975: 43); what we wish to emphasize here, however, is the interactionist focus
on rule-making as the actual work of real people, whether they be governments, pressure groups, businesses, moral entrepreneurs (Becker 1963: 147
ff ), informal primary groups, or whatever.
It is this approach that characterized interactionist studies of, for example,
the enactment of legislation concerning alcohol and marijuana use (e.g.,
Gusfield 1963; Becker 1963), or Blumers perspective on the relations between
races (for a recent discussion, see Esposito and Murphy (1999)). In each case
rules, whether formal or informal, were established which demonstrated the
power of some group to establish an authoritative definition of the situation,
and thus to criminalize certain activities, or stigmatize whole groups of people.
Inevitably, such rules were and are resisted and challenged; moreover their
very existence entails a redefinition of the situation by those who have been
rendered deviant, often with significant consequences for their sense of identity, and sometimes an increase, rather than the intended decrease, in deviant
activities (Lemert 1972). Yet to place an undue emphasis on these reactions
or responses, or to consider them subjective matters outside the remit of sociological analysis, is to misunderstand and distort the premises of interactionism.3 As ever, Becker made the essential point with great clarity, starting with
the Durkheimian theme that social groups create deviance by making the rules
whose infraction constitutes deviance (Becker 1963: 9, emphasis in original),
then making explicit the sociological corollary that deviance is not a quality
of the act that the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender (Becker 1963: 9, emphasis in original).
These extracts from Beckers introductory chapter in Outsiders have regularly appeared in sociology textbooks for nearly forty years now yet they
have rarely (if ever?) been followed by Beckers elaboration of his position,
so in the present context it is worth quoting from his subsequent remarks:
Who can, in fact, force others to accept their rules and what are the causes
of their success? This is, of course, a question of political and economic
power . . . Rules are made for young people by their elders . . . Men make
the rules for women in our society . . . Negroes find themselves subject to
rules made for them by whites. The foreign-born and those otherwise ethnically peculiar often have their rules made for them by the Protestant
Anglo-Saxon minority. The middle class makes rules the lower class must
obey in the schools, the courts, and elsewhere.
Differences in the ability to make rules and apply them to other people
are essentially power differentials (either legal or extralegal). Those groups
whose social position gives them weapons and power are best able to
enforce their rules. Distinctions of age, sex, ethnicity, and class are all related
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to differences in power, which accounts for differences in the degree to

which groups so distinguished can make rules for others. (Becker 1963:
178)
These remarks were made with reference to some of Beckers earliest work.
So it is significant, and entirely consistent with our argument, that a concern
with the analysis of power relations remains evident, although usually unnoticed, in his most recent writing. In explaining why interactionists (in this case
Goffman) are particularly concerned to explicate the vocabularies and perspectives of those they study, Becker argues that:
What things are called always reflects relations of power. People in power
call things what they want to, and others have to adjust to that, perhaps using
other words of their own in private, but accepting in public that they cannot
escape. Whatever my friends and I may think, marijuana is called a narcotic
drug by people who can make that name and the perspective associated with
it stick. (Becker 2003: 661)
We think it is reasonable to suggest that there is little evidence in these
remarks of a neglect of power (or, for that matter, of a subjective preoccupation, or of a neglect of social structure or the macro features of the wider
society). Nor do they offer much support to the contention that until the 1970s
or so the interactionist tradition was limited by its astructural bias (e.g.,
Musolf 1992: 173; Meltzer, Petras and Reynolds 1975: 106 ff ). On the contrary,
it is our contention that remarks such as these provide an indication of the
context in which the more specific studies are to be read this certainly
appears to have been Beckers intention, by placing them right at the beginning of the essays on aspects of deviance in Outsiders. In keeping with their
pragmatist orientation, theoretical disputes concerning the definition of power
are here deliberately eschewed. Power is not some kind of entity whose
essence can be revealed or abstracted from its situations of use, let alone
abstractly defined or measured. Instead, these authors are interested, like practical sociologists, in investigating how some people are able to do certain things
to other people sometimes little things (as in a close personal relationship),
and sometimes things of great societal import (like enacting laws, or relocating a business to a low-wage economy) in other words, with collective activities in the real world, and all their uncertainties, contingencies, and
unanticipated consequences (see also the argument of Hargreaves 1978).
Similarly, while interactionist work on deviant identities can indeed provide
sympathetic accounts of underdogs (and gratify ethnographic curiosity about
the subjective state of weirdos), its much more fundamental significance lies
in the demonstration of the often routine ways in which the formal processes
of institutions ensure the authoritative categorization of individuals, or whole
groups, as subordinate or morally unacceptable in some way. Critical to this is
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the detailed examination of police, court, or prison procedures, and with the
typifications of people and their actions which inform the perspectives of those
in authority. These concerns underlie many of the now-canonical studies in the
sociology of deviance. An influential example is Cicourels (1967) study of the
social organization of juvenile justice, which demonstrates in detail the ways
in which police procedures, and assumptions about the kind of people being
dealt with, play a crucial part in determining the different ways in which young
men are treated in the criminal justice system, and thus how the familiar social
class differences in rates of deviant behaviour come to be produced (see
Eglin 1987, for a discussion of these issues). It should be clear that in examining such processes and others, such as the ways in which police officers
may seek to maintain order rather than enforce the law (Bittner 1967), or
the ways in which prison culture reflects criminal values (Becker 1968: 80)
interactionist sociologists have focused specifically on the analysis of power
relationships in real-life settings. By examining the authoritative imposition of
deviant identities, and responses to these, both individual and collective, we
may obtain some understanding of the ways in which cultural patterns and
institutional constraints exert their influence on individuals, without reifying
the concept of social structure or the idea of power. Many other examples
could be given, including studies of the marginalization and classification of
mentally ill people such as the classic essays of Goffman (1959) or Lemert
(1962). Our main aim here, however, is simply to support the contention that
far from neglecting power relationships, many of the interactionist studies of
deviance are concerned precisely to examine and understand the ways in which
these are enacted in real institutional contexts.

Studies in the sociology of education

The themes of rules, identities and authority also emerge in interactionist
studies of the processes of formal education. Moreover, as with deviance, it is
simply not the case that these studies have been carried out in a theoretical
vacuum, and with an astructural bias. The point can again be documented
with reference to Becker, whose early work was undertaken in the context of
an established programme of educational research at the University of
Chicago, and one which by the early 1950s had already generated a theoretical framework which in many ways anticipated the later work of Bourdieu and
Passeron (1990 [1970]). For example, a recurring theme in Beckers early work
was that schools, organized in terms of one of the subcultures of a heterogeneous society, tend to operate in such a way that members of subordinate
groups of differing culture do not get their fair share of educational opportunity, and thus of opportunity for social mobility (Becker 1955: 103). Drawing
on earlier Chicago studies which had documented the links between social
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class and educational attainment (e.g., Lloyd Warner, Havighurst and Loab
1944; Hollingshead 1949; Davis 1950), Beckers study of teachers was concerned less to describe this relationship once more than to develop an explanation of how it was a consistent outcome of the everyday processes of the
school how routine, everyday activities in classrooms reproduced classbased, society-wide inequalities in educational attainment levels. Moreover,
Becker was quite explicit in taking as his target the discrimination of our educational system against the lower-class child (Becker 1952: 452).
Again, we suggest that there is little evidence here of a withdrawal from
institutional analysis or a neglect of macrosociological processes. On the
contrary, the full force and pervasiveness of the latter is acknowledged
from the start, and the aim of analysing school practices and procedures is to
understand more about them. Although we can only mention a few, subsequent studies maintain and develop this orientation. Rist (1970), for example,
like Becker, emphasized the importance of teacher expectations in influencing childrens performance, focusing on the ways in which interpersonal
processes in schools have major effects in reproducing a class-stratified
society. Yet Rist also argued against a too rigid application of labelling theory
(1977: 299): the outcome of classroom interactions (like any interactions) is
conditional and to an extent open-ended. These comments were consistent
with a move away from the notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy (e.g.,
Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968) as an explanation of educational attainment,
towards a view that conceives of the differentiation of students as a consequence of the administrative organization and decisions of personnel in the
high school (Cicourel and Kitsuse 1963: 6). This was a major theme in Cicourel
and Kitsuses study of decision-making by high school personnel (and the
common sense concepts which informed it), and in Laceys (1970) analysis
of the effects of streaming on pupils identification with formal and informal
cultures. In general, then, these studies display a concern to explicate the ways
in which class, race and later gender factors enter into the process of social
stratification. Rist made the point explicitly, arguing that while influential
large-scale social surveys had identified significant academic differences
among various groups of children, such studies gave no hint as to how these
differences come to manifest themselves. What is left unexamined is the
process by which there come to be winners and losers (Rist 1973: 18, emphasis in original).
Were it not for the ways in which interactionist studies have so often been
portrayed, it would surely be unnecessary to emphasize the point that schools
(literal) classification of students, their assessment of achievement and abilities, and their decisions about appropriate educational career trajectories, are
authoritative and usually unchallengeable. Teachers and educational professionals are in a position of power to define the situation for their students,
and to impose irrevocable identities on them. Whereas, for example,
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discrimination on the grounds of gender, ethnicity or religion is illegal in the

USA and EU, discrimination on the grounds of educational attainment is not.
It is hardly surprising, then, that the conferring of educational identities is generally regarded as an important aspect of the process of social stratification,
or that, as various studies have shown (and as Meads perspective on the self
suggests), over time students do internalize the ways in which they are
defined in formal educational contexts. In the extreme cases, those who are
treated as academically bright are able to see themselves as intelligent
people, while those deemed failures in the school may seek alternative sources
of positive identification, often finding it in anti-school subcultures (e.g.,
Lacey 1970).
Moreover, other studies generated an accumulation of research evidence
which suggests that the perception of educational ability depends on school
pupils and students willingness and ability to accept the teachers definition
of the situation, and the validity of his or her discourse, rather than display
academic talent (e.g., Keddie 1971; Hammersley 1974). Once again, it is those
children whose subculture is closest to that of the school, notably middle-class
children, who find it easiest to subordinate themselves to the demands of this
discourse, while it is those from culturally divergent backgrounds who may
have the greatest difficulty in accepting its relevance. Clearly, such results have
important implications for understanding the relationship between social class
and educational attainment. Of course, this is not a simple matter other
studies have examined the dynamics of classroom situations, the limits to
teachers power, and the strategies employed by pupils (see, for instance,
Barton and Meighan 1978; Woods 1983; Hammersley and Woods 1984). Our
purpose here, however, is simply to emphasize, once again, the various ways
in which school processes involve the enactment of power relationships which
can be of great consequence for the fate of individuals.
In general, then, we contend that far from displaying a microsociological
preoccupation or a concern with subjective responses, interactionist studies of
schools and classroom interaction are derived from a research agenda concerned above all to understand the processes through which educational
classifications are highly consequential for individuals careers. There is,
indeed, a considerable similarity between this agenda and Foucaults investigations into institutionalized practices, their accompanying discourses, and
their disciplinary effects. We will return to this below. At this point, however,
we wish only to emphasize, firstly, that the interactionist studies have contributed much to our understanding of the ways in which educational (and
criminal justice) institutions are involved in the allocation of authoritative
and highly consequential identities (which may be internalized by individuals), and secondly that such investigations allow for the development of
explanations of the social facts which are the basis of any kind of macrosociological approach.
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Power as a pragmatist and pragmatic issue

This summary of studies and, of course, we have only scratched the surface
here may not be enough to overcome the objection that we started out with,
that SI is good at generating empirical materials to support (or refute) sociological theory, but is incapable of generating or modifying theory itself. It
might be argued that, while interactionist studies of deviance and education
have deepened macrosociological analyses of power and inequality by
showing how they are generated and reproduced interactionally such analyses are still parasitical on mainstream, structured concerns to provide them
with an agenda or disciplinary relevance. Indeed, the notion that SI has provided sociology with some useful and relevant empirical material is nothing
new: as we have argued, this is just the point that mainstream sociologists are
prepared to concede. Our argument, however, is that SI as a perspective does
far more than this. It is not just an amendment or addition to mainstream
approaches, but represents a coherent theoretical alternative to those
approaches. The relationship that obtains between them, therefore, should be
addressed.
Here it is useful to return to Blumers (1969) account of the fundamental
premises underlying SI, which emphasizes the making and managing of
meaning in everyday life. Blumer immediately goes on to point out that, while
they seem straightforward, these premises are ignored or played down in
almost all contemporary sociology and psychology. Although he goes to great
pains to show their philosophical groundings and methodological implications,
such premises are often treated as if they were self-contained theoretical
propositions in their own right, and which collectively constitute the SI position
as a whole. Thus, for instance, Craib (1992) reproduces these premises as
assumptions, treated as the bases of varieties of interactionism from Turners
role theory to Goffmans dramaturgical approach which can be differentiated to the extent that they emphasize one or two of the assumptions over
the remainder. The Chicago School as a whole is thus difficult to assimilate
to structural-functionalism, even though it shares the same presuppositions
(Craib 1992: 86), and is:
. . . also closer to its social basis in American life, with its emphasis on egalitarianism, individual liberty and social mobility. How close it is to the full
reality of social life is, of course, another matter.
Craib, like many others, conflates premises with propositions. These propositions are found wanting they are just truisms and can be fleshed out only
with proper macrosociological theory (cf. Rock 1979: 10). The sense in which
these premises are the basis of a methodology, and are rooted in a philosophical tradition which emphasizes methodology over theories that take a
propositional form, is lost. With Menand (2001), it is our contention that these
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Symbolic interactionism and the concept of power 205

pragmatist ideas have been retrospectively located as products of their time,

and abandoned as a result. And, again with Menand, we wish to argue that a
resurgence of interest in them is a product of both changes in historical relevance and an intellectual trend (the belated recognition that hard structuralism is incapable without supplement of accounting for social
activities). Finally, and most importantly, we wish to argue that the reconciliation of interactionist themes and mainstream sociological theory takes the
kind of dualistic form reconciling structure and agency, or macro and micro
which is precisely the form that pragmatist philosophy aims to address and
(dis)solve.
As far as power is concerned, this dualistic form is fundamentally flawed in
so far as it treats the issue at hand as one of reconciling two opposing theories: one which construes power as a patterned structural inequality of
resources and another which construes it as an interpersonal phenomenon.
While the two could be shown to complement one another as Beckers work,
inter alia, shows there is no theoretical reason why this should be the case.
What would happen, for instance, if interactionist studies consistently showed
greater tolerance of races and religions at the same time that macrosociological surveys demonstrated systematic increases in patterned inequality on
the basis of ethnicity? The two could be reconciled in any particular case
but such an apparently ad hoc reconciliation is sociologically unsatisfying and
theoretically inelegant. Our argument, above, is that interactionist studies of
power relations cannot be construed as opposed to structural counterparts
without misrepresenting the former. But the problem, at least in principle,
seems to remain: there are two ways of approaching the problem of power (so
it seems), and these could come up with different accounts of any given situation. The theoretical issue, then, is to decide which approach makes most
sense as a coherent way of doing sociology.
The reason, we feel, that SI in particular is well placed to serve as
that approach rather than as one half of the problem underpinning its
requirement is precisely its pragmatist roots and orientation, those elements
of Blumers (1969) account that are most commonly overlooked. Pragmatism
is cognate with neither voluntarism nor relativism, but rather with a principled commitment to dissolving philosophical (and other) dualisms through the
examination of real-worldly situations of human activity and understanding. In
other words, a perspective which seeks to empirically overcome dualisms
including, we would argue, the structureagency and macromicro dilemmas
that currently obstruct the sociological analysis of power. Such dualisms are
enumerated in James (1907) classic account of the pragmatist movement, and
include the rationalistic/empiricist, principled/factual, idealistic/materialistic,
free-willist/fatalistic, monistic/pluralistic and dogmatic/sceptical. Some of
these dualisms appear in the discipline of sociology, often presented terms of
the structureagency or macromicro debates.
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Most pertinent to our argument is James discussion of the relationships

between determinism and free will. Even the most cursory reflection will show
that each perspective makes sense in its own terms, but that arbitrating
between the two as contending explanations is fruitless. Any phenomenon can
be explained using either as a guiding principle. So, for instance, one can use
the same facts to demonstrate that ethnic inequality is the result of individuals discriminatory attitudes or that those attitudes are the products of being
socialized in a society based on structural ethnic inequalities. To decide which
explanation is better cannot be done on the basis of the facts and so must
be done theoretically, philosophically. This is, of course, the structure-agency
dualism in full force!
But James seeks to move beyond this apparent dilemma to consider the
terms in a more rigorous light. To be sure, we can construe situations deterministically or voluntaristically, but the question James wishes to raise is just
what is at stake here? If both positions are logically consistent, and they are
incompatible with one another, what practical difference does it make which
is chosen and used? The truth of a philosophical or theoretical proposition
thus resides in its compatibility with other philosophical or theoretical commitments: ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true
just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of
our experience (James 1907: 29, emphasis in original). The truth of a theoretical construal of the nature of power can be ascertained by finding out what
difference that view would make compared with others in real-worldly situations of human life:
No particular results, then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation, is what
the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things,
principles, categories, supposed necessities; and of looking towards last
things, fruits, consequences, facts. (James 1907: 29)
The implications of this for the sociological study of power are that one
should not determine a priori anything more than is required to facilitate the
empirical study of human activities that will, in and of themselves, provide
answers to theoretical questions. Deweys argument develops and clarifies this
view:
What is already known, what is accepted as truth, is of immense importance;
enquiry could not proceed a step without it. But it is held subject to use,
and is at the mercy of the discoveries which it makes possible. It has to be
adjusted to the latter and not the latter to it. When things are defined as
instruments, their value and validity reside in what proceeds from them; consequences not antecedents supply meaning and verity. (Dewey 1929: 154)
Philosophy, for the pragmatists, is based on disputes about propositions that
cannot be resolved. By shifting the truth-value of a proposition from its
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Symbolic interactionism and the concept of power 207

consistency with empirical facts something which makes no sense if competing propositions can be equally compatible to the relative merits of its
consequences, it is possible at least to arbitrate between these approaches.
Pragmatism, again, is a method, not a system.
In the light of this, Blumers premises take on a different light. They facilitate studies, allow empirical investigations to take place, with a minimal theoretical apparatus designed to minimize a priori assumptions and maximize the
capacity of empirical materials to address theoretical problems in sociology.
By explicitly not assuming a fixed relationship between micro and macro,
structure and agency indeed, by disavowing the legitimacy of such distinctions it is possible to show how power as manifested in real situations generates and shapes both the individual and his or her social context. By starting
with a method, rather than with a theory, one can come to the same conclusion as Foucault that power is ubiquitous and that it shapes both the actor
and the structures of society.
Rather than construing SI as one half of a dualism, therefore, and accepting its findings as supports for (or arguments against) established theoretical
positions, we wish to advance the proposal that its way of doing things,
its philosophical and methodological rationale, is a more effective means
of solving sociologys disciplinary dilemmas than any alternatives currently
available.
Conclusion
We have argued that SI studies, far from neglecting the phenomena of power
in social life, have in fact focused for example in the fields of deviance and
education precisely on the ways in which authoritative and consequential
power relations are enacted and sustained by real people in ways which contribute to the structuring of societies. They are not, therefore, to be seen
as subjective or micro in orientation and scope, as so many textbooks (and
theorists!) have claimed. Nor are they a kind of defective or denuded version
of sociology, which needs to be supplemented with conventional structural or
macro analysis. On the contrary, our contention is that the SI perspective,
and the studies which it has generated, is derived from a fundamentally different (if often implicit) set of premises indeed, one of the reasons why G.H.
Mead retains his theoretical significance is that his work provides a link
between early American pragmatism and sociological thought. As Blumer
once put it, Mead was:
. . . primarily a philosopher. He differed from the bulk of philosophers in
believing that the cardinal problems of philosophy arose in the realm of
human group life and not in a separate realm of an individual thinker and
his [sic] universe. (Blumer 1981: 902)
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Alex Dennis and Peter J. Martin

It is, of course, this realm of human group life which is of paramount importance for SI: the focus is on society as an ongoing accomplishment, and not as
a hypostatized aggregate of structures, institutions or universal processes
which can be unambiguously defined, or even measured, from some objective standpoint. From this point of view, SI has sought to avoid what Whitehead (1925: 52) called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, mistaking such
idealist abstractions as beauty, freedom, justice, democracy or power for
concepts which identify specific entities or conditions, and which could, moreover, somehow be disengaged from the ongoing flux of social life.
Though the theme cannot be developed here, it remains to make explicit
the way in which this alternative perspective leads to a different approach to
understanding power in social life. As the above remarks have suggested, a
pragmatist orientation implies that there is no such thing or entity as power
in a universal, transcendental, sense; moreover (and as Foucault concurs) all
social relationships can be described in terms of their power dimensions. This
does not, however, lead to the absurdity of claiming that there are not enormous and enduring differentials in the capacity of some people to do things
to others. Such differentials, however, must be understood as the outcomes,
over time, of social processes often quite prosaic which ultimately produce
patterns of decisive advantages and disadvantages, often involving the accumulation (or loss) of significant resources money, land, military might, prestige, and so on. To understand how these patterns come about, how they are
perpetuated and challenged, and so on, is for us an important opportunity in
the exercise of the sociological imagination (Mills 1959). It would be wrong,
of course, to suggest that there have not been sociologists interactionist or
otherwise who have not made significant contributions in this respect. Hall,
for example, has explicitly made use of interactionist premises in his analysis
of the political domain (Hall 2003: 36), as well as drawing on the work of
Edelman (1964; 1977), who emphasized the importance of symbolism and language in the creation of political discourse. Another instance would be
Waddingtons (1998) detailed analyses of police work, demonstrating how
the effectiveness of police officers is a consequence of the symbolic representation of relevant authority, and how their decision-making depends
on processes of interpretation and situational definition.
There are many such studies, and we can only give a handful of examples
here. Our contention, however, is that such studies enable us to understand
the how and why of power relationships without illegitimately reifying the
concept of Power. Indeed, however attractive it might seem, or however politically expedient it might be, we submit that doing this is an analytical evasion,
and ultimately a futile one. As the examples of deviance and education studies
should have suggested, consequential power relationships, and gross inequalities of income, can be seen to be sustained by networks of reasonable people
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all doing perfectly normal and routine things, sustained by a symbolic discourse which legitimates some actions and denigrates or prohibits others (and
is ultimately anchored by legal sanctions). All of these activities, as the SI
studies have shown, are amenable to empirical investigation.
An analogous, and highly consequential, set of processes is that which sustains the differential power of money. Everyone knows that a hundred-dollar
bill confers more spending power than a dime, but, as Simmel pointed out a
century ago, this has nothing to do with the intrinsic characteristics of the banknote or the coin. On the contrary, it has everything to do with their legitimation by public power (Simmel 1997 [1900]: 237): the symbolic meanings
attached to them, and the ways in which real people in everyday situations
orient their activities in relation to them. In a similar fashion, we can see how
the power of, for example, a king or prime minister or chief executive officer
depends, as Weber (1922: 213) showed, on the symbolic legitimation of their
roles through a discourse of authority, an appropriate legal framework, and
the acceptance of these by whole networks of others in subordinate positions.
Such considerations also lead to an understanding of the ways in which the
power of such top people is rarely absolute, but is often contested, resisted
and, from time to time, challenged (see also King 2004). In this context, we
can agree with Worsley that decisive authority . . . lies in the hands of a small
set of men (1973: 10), while rejecting the conclusion that a theory of power
or an analysis of its distribution would lead to some ultimate understanding
of how this comes about (let alone contributing to any significant political
change).
Such considerations also lead us to question the familiar assertion that we
know little about these top people mainly men in positions of significant
power. On the contrary, countless thousands of books of biography and autobiography have been written about and by such people: indeed in recent times
it has been customary for historians to react against the tendency to write
history as a narrative of Great Men. None of these works has led to the formulation of an accepted definition, let alone a theory, of power, and nor could
they ever do so. Such accounts tend to support the contention that people in
positions of power tend to operate very much like other ordinary human
beings in more familiar social contexts.
So we are led back to our point of departure, and Foucaults notion of the
omnipresence of power. He uses this term:
. . . not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything under its
invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next,
at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power
is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes
from everywhere. And Power, insofar as it is permanent, repetitious, inert,
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and self-reproducing, is simply the over-all effect that emerges from all these
mobilities, the concatenation that rests on each of them and seeks in turn
to arrest their movement. (Foucault 1976: 93)
While there are all sorts of differences in the genealogies of Foucaults ideas
and those of SI, their convergence on common ground is, we suggest, undeniable. Both rejected the formulation of an explicit theory of power (Szakolczai 1998: 14023); both focus on institutional processes in contemporary
societies; both take the struggle among social groups and their competing definitions of reality as the dynamic which underlies social organization; and both
have a particular concern for what, for Foucault, was the genealogy of subjectivity (Szakolczai 1998: 1407) and for SI the social genesis of the self.4 There
is, too, a rich irony in the ways that both Foucault and SI not only reject the
charge of subjectivism so often made by orthodox social scientists, but throw
it back at them:
For Foucault, the discursive field of formal academic theorizing about power
primarily derives from notions of sovereignty. In this context sovereignty
refers to an originating subject whose will is power. (Clegg 1998: 31)
While, for Blumer, the social theorists a priori imposition of a set of categories
on the social world is itself a form of subjectivism:
. . . the objective approach holds the danger of the observer substituting
his [sic] view of the field of action for the view held by the actor. (1969: 74)
Like the pragmatists from whom its initial inspiration was drawn, SI rests on
a principled refusal to deal in the supposedly universal, objective, and metaphysical categories and concepts which have produced little more than confusion in philosophy and sociology:
It answered metaphysical questions by urging a return to the social world.
It is thus patently at odds with the tenor of most academic discourse. In turn,
it cannot satisfy the demands that are created by that discourse. (Rock 1979:
233)
SI is fundamentally and inescapably concerned with the realm of human
group life and, to the extent that this realm is ignored by conventional sociology, cannot easily be integrated with, or incorporated into, it. We are, finally
and appropriately, reminded of the words of a neo-pragmatist philosopher,
Richard Rorty:
We must repudiate the vocabulary our opponents use, and not let them
impose it upon us . . . our efforts at persuasion must take the form of gradual
inculcation of new ways of speaking, rather than of straightforward argument
within old ways of speaking. (Rorty 1999: xviiixix)
(Date accepted: February 2005)
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Symbolic interactionism and the concept of power 211

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Russell Kelly, Greg Smith, Rod Watson and participants in
the 2004 SSSI Annual Meetings for their comments on earlier drafts of this
paper.

Notes
1. Haralambos continues by suggesting
that SI is a distinctly American branch of
sociology and to some this partly explains its
shortcomings but we will refrain from
pursuing this. For present purposes we wish
to focus on the claim that interactionism
examines human interaction in a vacuum
and that structural norms are ignored or
neglected (Haralambos 1980: 551).
2. Although it may be conceded that
these premises have often remained

implicit. See Rock (1979: 5 ff, and his discussion of the oral tradition of SI).
3. The standard criticisms of an SI
approach to deviance all revolve around
fundamental misunderstandings of SI
(Rock 1979: 240, n. 19).
4. Burns (1992, especially 1636) and
Misztal (2001, especially 3189) deal more
comprehensively with the detailed issues
of convergence between Foucault and
Goffman.

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London School of Economics and Political Science 2005