The chapter examines the influential perspective of symbolic interactionism with regard to its defining assumptions, its historical emergence, and its present status, both in the United States and internationally. The discussion covers debates among interactionists regarding theory and methodology, and it also considers intellectual movements strongly influenced by interactionism, especially identity theory, labeling theory, dramaturgy, and constructionism.

Lawrence T. Nichols is a former professor of sociology, recently retired from West Virginia University. He continues to do research and to publish on sociological theory, the construction of social problems, and the history and sociology of social science. Dr. Nichols also edits The American Sociologist, a quarterly journal with an international readership.

The first part of this chapter reviews Goffman’s intellectual context in terms of the dramaturgical model and its significance in Goffman’s work overall. The second part compared dramaturgy to ethnomethodology before turning to the work after Goffman, particularly the signaling theory championed by Diego Gambetta.

Philip Manning received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1989. He is a Professor of Sociology at Cleveland State University. His work concerns social theory and intellectual history, particularly the history and practice of symbolic interactionism. He recently completed an NSF project that designed a user-friendly way to store passwords in games and is currently exploring ways to increase federal grant success in small universities.

This chapter draws on the works of key labelling theorists Howard Becker, Edward Lemert and Stanley Cohen to explore how individuals come to be labelled as deviant or criminal, the subsequent impact that labelling and stigmatisation can have on behaviour, and the need to carefully consider interventions to social issues that go beyond ‘law and order’ responses. First, the theoretical underpinnings of labelling theory, which are found within the sociological perspectives of social constructionism and symbolic interactionism, are discussed.