Micro-sociology: interactionism and labeling

George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer are the founding fathers of interactionism (Blumer, 1969; Blumer and Mead, 1980). They tried to theorize the relationship between social structure and human agency. Interactionism focused on the process of collective meaning creation rather than individual action. In great use after World War–II, it was accepted and applied by those sociologists who were dissatisfied with the functionalist and positivist orthodoxy in sociological theory (Fine, 1993). Such sociologists favored use of qualitative and interpretive methods over quantitative and statistical methods used by their predecessors. Interactionist or symbolic interactionist theory explains human action by linking it to meanings that lie in the mind of the actors. Thus to understand human action is to understand subjective meanings behind it. This cannot be done using scientific methodology but by using participatory approach, observations, interviews, narratives and empathy.