ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the basic notions of the normative paradigm and shows how they underlie such widely divergent perspectives as operant-conditioning theories of behavior and conventional sociological theories employing the notions of culture, social structure, and socialization. It describes an alternative perspective based on the notion of social interaction as an interpretive process. The phenomena of interest in sociological investigation are patterns of action, which consist ultimately of interactions between particular actors. For sociological explanations, the assumed theoretical premises would consist of the assumptions embodied in the model of the actor together with whatever strictly sociological postulates are adopted. The process of interaction, then, is at the logical core of sociological interest, even though for some purposes, particularly of a macrosociological sort, this is often left implicit. The normative paradigm consists of two major orienting ideas: interaction is essentially rule governed, and sociological explanation should properly take the deductive form characteristic of natural science.
