Page 66 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

Cross-Disciplinary Scientific Foundation for Sustainability Chapter j 3 43

they talk or communicate about behaviors and the way in which this talking
creates a situation and interactions. A moving picture of reality is created. The
actors have to understand how they create their experiential space and in which
way they can act sensibly in it. Actors who are conscious about their expe-
riential space will be less orientated toward rigid views of what is true or false
and more oriented toward what is a flexible, creative, sensible, and fluid
depiction of everyday life. Therefore no interaction represents truth or false-
hood, but only versions that are more or less sensible and explain everyday
life.

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM: IN THE SUBJECTIVIST
THEORETICAL PARADIGM
The primary mode for understanding organizational or collective interactions
is through the symbols (or meaning) involved in the situations and events.
Symbolic interactionism is the study of collective action between groups or
organizations from the actors’ Lifeworld perspective. The analysis of orga-
nizational actions must be seen within the context that helps define the
interactions. However, each context has a history of events that frame it. And
the interactions themselves redefine and create a new set of circumstances
from which the organization operates.
Contextual analysis, therefore, can be limited and static since it only
reflects the status quo and on-dimensional perspective of the past. To under-
stand the present actions of an organization, and even attempt to predict its
future actions, specific situations must be studied. Therefore transformational
grammar provides the framework of scientific analyses and rule making. From
human interactionism through language, scientific hypotheses can be created
with explanations and predictive models.
George Herbert Mead (1962; originally 1932) at the turn of the 20th
century from the University of Chicago formulated the philosophical basis for
the symbolic interactionist perspective upon which Herbert Blumer (1962)
expounded. The symbolic interactionist perspective discusses how human
beings act and interact in everyday life. Mead, with his student and subsequent
chief proponent Blumer, laid the groundwork for much of the theory behind
today’s “qualitative theory” in sociology. Mead rejected the classical English
and American traditions and drew instead upon philosophical elements in both
continental European and Far Eastern philosophy to counteract the empiricist
and positivist determinists who were beginning to dominate the development
of the social sciences.
Mead and Blumer argued that individuals are actors who alone or in
groups interact in a variety of daily situations, be they personal, business,
social, or whatever. Since human beings are thinking and reflecting, these
interactions and the study of them are the basis of all human behavior.
Language is used between actors as they interact and communicate. The