Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

“Interaction” describes particular kinds of social relationship that are different from, but constitutive of, groups, organizations, and networks. Interaction occurs when two or more participants are in each other's perceptual range and orient to each other through their action and activity. It ends when the participants dissolve their mutual orientation and leave the social situation. Sociological research only gradually recognized the significance of social interaction. It initially focused on groups and organized relationships before progressively finding that temporary bound social relationships are critical to understanding the emergence and organization of more persistent forms of relationship. Georg Simmel was one of the first sociologists to mark the difference between relatively persistent social relationships such as groups and fleeting social encounters such as the mutual exchange of glances. He differentiates various “forms of interaction” and demonstrates their significance for social life. Simmel's work has been of great importance for the development of sociological approaches to understanding interaction, in particular symbolic interactionism and conversation analysis. George Herbert Mead argues that the emergence of interaction is grounded in the fact that people's actions function as social stimuli that affect a reaction of the other. He differentiates interaction ... log in or subscribe to read full text