ABSTRACT
Ethnomethodologists actually listen to what men have to say, they allow men to typify their own behaviour as well as encouraging them to construct their own moral meanings. In this chapter, the authors can assent to the postulation of the self as a social process, without surrendering completely to the belief that the self is nothing but the ‘generalized other’. Similarly, they do not have to accept without reservation the notion that needs are explained by social determinants. The separation of individual needs and ‘social facts’ seems to be a prerequisite of any discussion of the influence of symbols in man’s interactive behaviour. Bill Harrel is disputing the symbolic interactionist assertion that meaning derives from symbolic accounts of interactive processes. In the relationships between the multiplicity of groups and individuals in modern industrial society a fragmented personality structure has decided advantages over the monolithic personality posited by certain varieties of socialization theory.
