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This introductory chapter discusses the complex history of symbolic interactionism (SI) along with the theoretical and methodological foundations of this multifaceted and broadly relevant perspective in the field of sociology. Rather than seeing SI as a well-defined program, the volume’s editors view contemporary SI as a rich and varied field of scholarship, and those who use SI as scholars who draw inspiration from multiple influences, blending them into new lenses with which to study the emergence or creative performance of meaning in a diverse variety of contexts and situations. In line with this vision, this handbook takes a flexible and expansive view of SI, rather than a rigid and orthodox position, both historically and in terms of our assessment of the field today. To this end, the introduction discusses four important developments that are reshaping the broad field of contemporary symbolic interactionist scholarship: the blending of SI with cultural sociology to form new visions of cultural interactionism, a renewed engagement with classical pragmatism, the growing significance of formal interactionism, and an expanding emphasis on power, inequalities, and intersectionality in contemporary SI research. The scholars who have contributed to this handbook demonstrate these developments in different ways. Finally, the chapter presents a brief overview of this handbook, which is organized into four parts: (I) theoretical and methodological orientations; (II) culture, context, and symbolic interaction; (III) power and inequalities; and (IV) environment, disasters, and risk. In the process, we stress the timely and unique characteristics of each chapter.

This chapter outlines a comparative framework for ethnographic analysis that combines contributions from formal sociology, symbolic interaction, and the strong program in cultural sociology. Building on the methodological perspective that Eviatar Zerubavel has termed “social pattern analysis,” the authors show how underlying formal properties, including patterns of social interaction, foundational narrative structures, and formulaic modes of performance, tie otherwise quite disparate cases together. Moreover, actors in different contexts merge these social forms with widespread cultural codes, resulting in patterned structures of meaning. Otherwise different cases thus emerge as variant manifestations of a common social theme. Using such social themes as analytic lenses offers great promise for theory construction and serves as a guide for expanding empirical inquiry to a greater range of contexts and cases. Drawing on research pertaining to various topics, the chapter shows how using a thematic lens provides a compelling foundation for comparative multicase analysis while honing the interpretive and descriptive strengths traditionally associated with ethnography on the underlying properties and processes that tie such cases together.

This chapter explores the ways individuals account for cognitive migrations—significant changes of mind and consciousness that are often expressed as powerful discoveries, transformative experiences, and newly embraced worldviews. It outlines three ideal typical forms of cognitive migration: awakenings, self-actualizations, and ongoing quests. Building on prior approaches to such personal transformations, it develops the notion of cognitive migration to argue the following set of interrelated points. First, cognitive migrations take autobiographical form, which is to say they manifest as the narrative identity work of individuals who undergo them. Second, such narrative identity work provides a reflexive foundation for an individual’s understanding of self and identity in relation to other possible selves and identities—for seeing oneself as a relationally situated character. Third, individuals who articulate cognitive migrations use the plot structure and cultural coding at the root of their narratives to express their allegiance to a new sociomental community. They thereby take on new cognitive norms and identity-defining conventions while rejecting potential alternatives, locating themselves within a broader sociomental field. The spatial metaphor of cognitive migrations draws explicit attention to the broader sociomental field in which such radical changes of mind take place. Finally, such narrative identity work links self-understandings to the often-contested meanings of broadly relevant issues, events, and experiences; when individuals account for their cognitive migrations, they also advance claims that reach well-beyond their personal lives.

In this article, I compare contemporary mnemonic battles concerning three issues: child sexual abuse, the Vietnam war and American slavery. Analyzing the rhetorical dynamics between contentious mnemonic agents in each case, I detail the formal cultural strategies that define different mnemonic disputes in order to elucidate the ways agents use autobiographical memories in contests for mnemonic authority. Mnemonic battles take three principal forms: disputes over the existence, the nature and the relevance of the past. Each case I present is most aptly characterized as one of these three types. More, each illustrates a different way that actors achieve the formal alignment and social interdependence of autobiographical and collective memory claims when defining a contested past. Such an approach provides a useful analytic guide to understanding public struggles for mnemonic authority in a contemporary cultural milieu marked by a new ethic of autobiographical storytelling. Beyond demonstrating how dynamics of contention form around memory, I show how agents coordinate personal and collective memories to shape the dynamics of contention.

In this article, I detail two rhetorical strategies that trauma carrier groups—including social movement organizations, professional mental health associations, and patient advocacy groups—use to expand the relevance of trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) through space and time: the social transmission of trauma and the social affiliation of traumatic experiences. With regard to social transmission, carrier groups claim that the psychological consequences of traumatic events are shared by members of established communities (a collective experience framework) and spread through social relationships (a social network framework). They expand the relevance of trauma and PTSD beyond those who directly experience the traumatic event at issue. With regard to social affiliation, carrier groups attribute common consequences to otherwise distinct events, making trauma and PTSD relevant to a growing variety of communities and individuals. Trauma carrier groups use both strategies to generalize a vocabulary of victimization and promote affective solidarity, providing discursive tools that a growing variety of individuals and communities can use to identify with trauma and its consequences. By mapping these rhetorical strategies, I propose a framework for analyzing the microsocial dynamics of cultural trauma and the expansion of the trauma concept as a diagnostic lens for defining diverse individual and social problems.

Taking an interactionist, narrative approach to psychology’s “memory wars,” I analyze the accounts of self-identified survivors of childhood sexual abuse (traditionally emphasized by “recovered” memory advocates) and the accounts of retractors—those who reject their former memories of childhood sexual abuse (traditionally emphasized by “false” memory advocates). Although typically held to be oppositional, both groups conform to similar patterns of storytelling. Both survivors and retractors use scripted symbolic awakenings to account for their past mnemonic “errors” and their more recent discovery of “truth.” Such symbolic awakenings are important mechanisms of mnemonic and autobiographical revision. Further, both groups use vocabularies of cognitive constraint to claim that cognitive authority figures once controlled their ability to interpret and remember their experiences. I approach the question of childhood sexual abuse and memory with attention to the distinctly social influences on cognition. I argue that the experiences of recovering and retracting memories involve similar social processes of remembering and storytelling.

In the 1970s, psychoanalysis came under attack on two fronts. On the one hand, proponents of a new biomedical model of psychiatry began pushing for a major paradigmatic shift in the 1980 revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Cooksey and Brown, 1998; Horwitz, 2002). On the other hand, various social movement communities, including the North American feminist movement, the growing gay pride movement, and the anti-war Vietnam veterans’ movement were advancing a “new ethos of self-discovery” involving “a politics of lifestyle” and a shared “politics of self-identity” (Giddens, 1991, pp. 209–217). These new social movements were, in various ways, deeply influenced by the psychoanalytic commitment to self-exploration, but they were also increasingly critical of the Freudian convention of interpreting psychological and behavioral problems as evidence of idiosyncratic personal conflicts buried in the mind of the individual sufferer. Instead, participants in these late modern political movements cooperated to interpret negative psychological experiences to be symptoms of social problems held in common with others victimized by the same conditions. As they linked personal introspection to new ideas about critical social discovery, activists criticized psychoanalytic authorities for ignoring, and even perpetuating, significant social problems.

Purpose – In this chapter, I examine the ways that various trauma carriers, including social movements, self-identified survivors, professional organizations, and advocates make public claims about trauma and the PTSD diagnosis as they work to define moral and political issues. Methodology/approach – Employing the method of social pattern analysis, I analyze a variety of narrative data pertaining to issues such as child sexual abuse, war, slavery, and genocide. Findings – Trauma carriers engage in significant social memory work and collective identity work, define social problems, and practice social activism as they address the causes and consequences of psychological suffering. Within the context of modern diagnostic psychiatry, the PTSD diagnosis stands out as a unique narrative of social illness. The PTSD diagnosis is a powerful cultural script that various individuals and interest groups use to interpret mental health symptoms while attributing psychological consequences to social causes as opposed to problems rooted in the individual's psyche (as with psychoanalysis) or neurophysiology (as with modern diagnostic psychiatry). By implication, the social world must be “cured” for the individual to be healthy. Originality/value of paper – I detail the unique sociocognitive implications of the PTSD diagnosis, highlighting its impact on our collective understanding of particular traumatic experiences and the shared nature of posttraumatic affect. I show the relevance of social memory studies, the more broadly conceived sociology of culture and cognition – especially as it pertains to collective identity and classification norms, the sociology of health-focused social movements, and the analysis of social problems claims-making to an emerging sociology of diagnosis.