ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a version of current symbolic interactionism that eschews role concepts as too static, non-processual, and insufficiently attuned to the constructed character of social life, and uses the concepts of negotiation and negotiated order to link person and social organization. It deals with ongoing and future developments in symbolic interactionism than with history. Insofar as symbolic interactionism seeks to be a general social psychological framework, such neglect leaves it open to legitimate criticism. Of the theoretical orientations underlying work in social psychology, it is symbolic interactionism that has had its major development among sociologists and that has had major appeal to sociologists. Communication involves conversations of gestures, the use by participants in social acts of early stages of one another’s acts as indicators or predictors of later stages. Society is through this process continuously being created and recreated; in contemporary language, social interaction is constructed.
