Sociology of the Anarchists - Gozips.uakron.edu - The University of ...

Symbolic/Micro-Interaction
[Write a lot more here about this tradition... why does Marshall view this to be the
natural basis for anarchist theory?]
Sociology is largely compatible with anarchist vision, since it harbors “a view of society
as spontaneous order” (Marshall 1998, p. 20), drawing from the symbolic interactionist
tradition. According to Jones (1994):
Collaborative or consensus decision making is based on a
theory, generally derived from the symbolic interaction
school of sociology, that says the social order is a
negotiated matter, continually subject to negotiation. (p.
162)
Symbolic interaction provides a beautiful justification for socialism (and, I would argue,
anarchism): Mead claimed that humans talk in symbols, with shared meanings. This
social interaction creates meaning for human lives. In essence, humans are social
creatures, and could have no basis for “self” outside of a social community. Thus, brash
individualists are incorrect, according to Mead and the micro-interactionists, because they
do not acknowledge that humans need social interaction in order to function at all. Cooley
argued that thinking is barely more than an inner-conversation with our “self”. He also
said that people cannot see themselves without the mirror or others to reflect back
meaning to them. Mead diversified Cooley's views and “looking glass self theory”, but
agreed that humans are social creatures and that without society, they would not even
have the ability to utilize abstract thinking – a heralded human trait.
Mead makes the argument that there are three components to the “self”: multiple “me's”,
the “I”, and the “generalized other”. The generalized other is the general norms and
attitudes of the whole community, and it allows us to interact with that community. He
uses the example of property, saying that people's general relationship to property is the
same and commonly held, and thus is respected. By such logic, if people's attitudes were
generally different towards property, the “self” would approach it with different attitudes,
perhaps the attitudes that Proudhon held when he posited that property was “theft”. Even
in Mead's example, distinctions can be made. Most people hold up the sanctity of
personal property, but have more ambivalent attitudes towards public property (for better
or worse). Thus, it is possible, as the black bloc likely would argue, to change people's
general attitudes towards property in order to shift them from symbolizing sacred items to
tools of empowerment or oppression. 30
Howard Becker from the Chicago School of Symbolic Interaction viewed the theory in
terms of jazz music – there is a lot of improvisation, while you play off of others. Each
musician still finds their way through each piece of music within the general framework
30 See the section on Violence for a similar discussion about property (and its destruction) from the Acme
Collective's 1999 communique.
[ Williams 32 ] [ this is a draft. do not cite. ]