short, the era was a watershed. Sociology was deeply engaged in trying to understand social change and transformation. Some earlier work seems surprisingly contemporary. We have no doubt that some later work will soon attain the status of classics. But, most of the major conversations and controversies in contemporary sociological theory have roots in the 1960s and 1970s, and each drew in different ways on classical theory.
Symbolic and strategic interaction
In the 1960s, there was renewed interest in connecting personal life to sociological issues. The most important bridge from classical to contemporary was established in Herbert Blumer’s work in the tradition of his teacher, George Herbert Mead He named this “symbolic interactionism.” The creation of social reality, Blumer argued, is a continuous process. Positivist research methods that break this down into “variables” commonly lose touch with the meaning that was created by actors in interaction. It is important to understand society not as static structures but as potentials that people could use in their future actions and interactions.
Part of the attraction of symbolic interactionism was that it offered insight into the self and society at the same time. This suited it to an era when people placed new emphasis on self-understanding, not least in the context of expansion in the range of choices they could make about their lives. Throwing off constraints was a major theme of the 1960s, an era of Romantic enthusiasm for self-examination and self-expression. But, as contemporary sociologists showed, the ideal of perfect freedom was illusory. Even sex, drugs and rock and roll were socially organized.
No theorist was more important to this effort than Erving Goffman (excerpted here). Influenced by Mead, Durkheim, the “Chicago School” and classical sociological theory generally (and also by anthropology), Goffman resisted belonging to any one school. He pursued ethnographic studies with theoretical intent – and vast influence. In these, he sought to situate individuals not just in social relationships but in projects of creating and managing their self-understanding at the same time they managed their relations to others. Coping with embarrassment is a repeated and personally meaningful social task (even if sometimes ignored by theorists). We can think of individuals as actors in social dramas, he wrote, presenting themselves in more or less persuasive performances.
Part of what made Goffman’s work so important was his focus on ordinary people as they managed social challenges such as stigma, mental illness, repressive institutions, or simply dating in high school. He did not see society mainly through its elites, nor did he see it as obviously harmonious. In this, he fit with and shaped an era of growing appreciation for the life projects of ordinary people and a sensitivity to society as sometimes an obstacle or a challenge as well as usually a necessary condition.
Goffman was perhaps the most powerful influence in the development of “microsociology.” This focused on the small picture of face-to-face interaction, not the big picture of politics, economics, functional integration or class conflict. A successful conversation is a social achievement and not always an easy one, Goffman suggested, and commonly dependent on “interaction rituals.” Goffman’s insight informed decades of research in conversational analysis, a branch of ethnomethodology – the phenomenological study of how people create culture and meaning.
Randall Collins (excerpted here) took the theme of “interaction rituals” forward in a “radical microsociology,” seeking to complement Durkheim’s understandings of group membership and conflict with attention to the small scale and concrete. For it is not just conversation that has to be socially organized in interpersonal exchanges but also sex – or just holding hands, crime, violence, smoking or not smoking, or starting a business partnership. Institutions maintain themselves through the ritualization of interaction. Conflict results not only from the breakdown of ritual interaction chains but also from mobilizing them into contending social forces – say capitalists and workers, different religions, or police and protestors. In conflicts, action is shaped by rituals, but actors also mobilize ritual interaction chains to try to secure their objectives.
It is common to think of symbolic interactionism and interpretative microsociology generally as completely distinct from strategic or rational choice analysis. Goffman, however, made contributions to both. His accounts of the production and management of meanings and images always included attention to implicit strategies. Indeed, he coined the term “strategic interaction,” which later became the title of one of his books, including a chapter based on his presentation to a 1964 conference on “Strategic Interaction and Games” that influenced developments in international relations and economics as well as sociology and social psychology. This introduced him to the dynamic (later to be called or evolutionary) game theory being developed by Thomas Schelling (an economist and future Nobel economist). Schelling in turn cited Goffman appreciately for contributions to understanding enforcement and communication in strategic interaction.
Strategic analysis of basic sociological questions is at least as old as Thomas Hobbes’ account of why rational individuals in a “state of nature” would choose to give up their freedom for the security of a strong state. The issue remains current today as people debate whether to worry more about policy violence restricting their freedom or crime that poses a demand for policy to provide security. Obviously, balance is desirable. But, achieving balance is itself the kind of problem taken up by analysts of strategic interaction. Building on the exchange theories of George Homans and Peter Blau (both excerpted in Classical Sociological Theory), contemporary sociological theorists developed a “rational choice” approach to sociology. This was grounded in methodological individualism – the idea that a good sociological explanation had to make sense of individual action as a crucial building block. As articulated, for example, by James Coleman (excerpted here), this challenged Durkheim, Parsons, and all who approached society as a “whole” sharply distinct from individuals. Critics sometimes confused methodological individualism with a preference for individual autonomy over group solidarity. But as Michael Hechter (excerpted here) famously showed, one could provide a strong account of how rational individuals formed group solidarity.
Both studies of symbolic action and analysis of rational choice inform the idea of “agency.” This means the capacity to act effectively, accomplishing one’s own goals and potentially changing social relations. Minimal agency is involved in making a simple consumer choice – like which brand of breakfast cereal to buy. There is more when one can choose a career and acquire the education to succeed in it or start a business and secure the capital for it to flourish. This is partly a matter of resources and rational choices. But as Goffman showed, it is also a matter of communication that makes collaboration and social relationships possible. Paying attention to strategy and communication together helps to distinguish agency from action based on emotion or habit or indeed failure to think.
Without agency, people either act without direction or are dominated by social structure. This does not mean they do nothing but that their actions are highly constrained. People form relationships partly in order to get things done but also for the pleasure of the relationship itself. They invest relationships with meaning, which is mutually constituted through their interaction. Relationships in turn become factors enabling people to realize their goals. Goffman bridged what is more commonly a divide between interpretative sociology and more formal strategic analysis. Both sides inform the analysis of agency.
Structure, agency, and institutions
At its most basic, structure is the enduring patterns of social organization with which individuals must contend. They can change structure, but usually only over a long period and through collective action. Take the population structure. How many people are young and how many are old will have a big impact on markets, need for schools or old age care, hospitals and sports fields. The age distribution changes if young people marry earlier and have more babies, but the influence of any one pair of parents is small. It will change if more immigrants are accepted, but this depends on politics and policy, not just individual choices.
Structural patterns are slow to change. Many constraints are produced and reproduced beyond the direct, conscious choices of individuals. Sociologists also want to know how much agency individuals or groups have in guiding