Sociocultural Tradition - Symbolic Interactionism

Sociocultural Tradition - Symbolic Interactionism

Starbucks coffee shops here in the Philippines show as a status symbol—“elite” not only in its price and ambiance but the branding itself while in outside countries it is just an ordinary brewing coffeehouse. In the season of Enhanced Community Quarantine, some branches of Starbucks were opened and long lines of cars awaited and caused traffic. 

If you are to think about it—a person will only value Starbucks, if he/she will be with people who value it. Could be friends, parents, siblings—could be ads? Organizations or groups he/she had been in. It is shocking how many people go there. Could be how society viewed it as it trickles down to the members, how the elites saw it as a status symbol that some people want to achieve.

Shaping the social world rather than simply acted upon. It is already evident as seen how those practices and symbols shape who they are as a person. It follows the trend and majority. People interact with things based on ascribed meaning—constructivism, an extension of symbolic interactionism which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be.

George Herbert Mead is the considered founder of symbolic interactionism though Herbert Blumer coined the term of “symbolic interactionism.” It explains how humans interact with things based on meanings. This varies on culture and situation that explains social behavior. This affects the people’s perception. The pattern of communication exchange of meaning through languages, symbols, and gestures people makes sense of their social world. Wherein a sense of self develops in social interaction based on culture or situations—symbols, the way on how the person views himself through the way he acts and interacts, still it depends on how you interpret these. Viewing it differently affects the outcome of an interaction.