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Theories of symbolic interaction and ethnomethodology, assume that everyone undertakes a complex process of construction of reality, including self-identity, in interaction with significant others. Utilizing insights into variations in identity reformulation in marriage obtained from a study of American metropolitan women, this paper concentrates on variations of identity reformulation among widows. The major hypothesis guiding the discussion is that the higher the education of the woman, as measured by formal schooling, the more she is likely to experience and undertake identity reformulation in marriage and in widowhood. The less education a woman has, the less she will be consciously affected in her identity formulation by these events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an exploration of the relationship between members' role performance and the benefits they receive from their organizations. The general relationship is interpreted in the context of a "social exchange model" for voluntary associations. Data for the analysis pertain to members of four voluntary farm organizations: Farm Bureau, Farmers Union, National Farmers Organization, and Grange. The data were obtained in a state-wide survey of Wisconsin farm operators in 1965. In general, the data show a moderate relationship, in a positive direction, between benefits and role performance. The benefits tend to differ in the magnitude and, in some instances, in the direction of their relationships to such performance. The findings indicate the importance of taking into account magnitude and direction of relationship, as well as interaction among the benefits and among costs, in order to devise a viable social exchange model of cost benefit relations for voluntary associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general theory of symbolic interaction, specifically self theory, is focused upon the importance of language as an instrument of definition and communication. People are seen as responding not directly to a resistant outer reality but to meanings of objects which are defined within a cultural system and social organization. G. H. Mead, in his discussion of the way persons develop self concepts and the accompanying ability to take roles effectively, speaks of the degree to which persons develop a "general other." This general other is an organized structure of attitudes believed to be common to all and is defined in terms of a universe of discourse growing out of the symbolic interaction of a community of individuals. Replies to the Twenty Statements Test, described by Kuhn and McPartland, display this quality. Self-identifying statements which people make fall along a rough spectrum of reference which can be broken up in various ways. The distinction which Kuhn and McPartland have reported is between what they call consensual and nonconsensual statements. Consensual statements are defined as those statements which would be generally understood by persons in the larger society without explanation. Nonconsensual statements are defined as those requiring interpretation before their social relevance can be assessed. The consensual statement is language behavior directed to the general other, while the nonconsensual statement is language directed to a more limited audience. H. S. Sullivan's contribution in developing the notion of the "significant other" consists in accounting for the fact that persons often do not seem to internalize standards and norms from the whole society but from segments of it on some selective basis. In this paper, the number of consensual statements made in response to the Twenty Statements Test will be called the locus score. Respondents are assigned to "high" and "low" locus categories as they make more or less than the median number of consensual statements. Expanding upon this frame of reference, it seems reasonable to propose that the locus quality found in self-conceptions of a given person is also characteristic of his conceptions of other objects. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that the self is the core of a set of interrelated attitudes, and that the level of reference employed by the respondent in his attitudes toward the self would therefore be applicable to other attitudes as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the nature of value-commitments, conceived as a generalized symbolic medium of interchange in the processes of social interaction, in this respect paralleling money, power, and influence. Commitments constitute moral obligations of units of a system of social interaction to maintain the integrity of a value-pattern and to strive toward its implementation in action through combination with non-value factors. Stability of commitments is a basic condition of the compatibility of wide moral freedom with the exigencies of social functioning. Like the other three media, commitments are not bound by a zero-sum condition, but can be expanded, especially through charismatic movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ‘generalized symbolic media of social interaction’ was introduced by Parsons five years ago in his two articles on the concepts of power and influence. I believe that it represents a theoretical development of the first importance, which has received much less attention—particularly in my own field of social anthropology—than it deserves. The purpose of the present paper is to review and criticize the concept itself and to point out its relevance to certain problems in social anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]