The Functioning of the Self During the Interlinkage of Action: A Radical Interactionist Perspective

Abstract

The present‐day state of our knowledge of the self as a soliloquy has not moved far beyond where the American pragmatists, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, left it almost a century ago. Since their writings underpin the view of the self that current followers of the perspective of symbolic interactionism have adopted, their work still remain relevant today. To advance the development of the self as a soliloquy significantly beyond the point that it currently stands, however, I propose an explanation from the radical interactionist's perspective to account for the self's operation during the interlinkage of the individual acts that results, in conflictive or cooperative social acts. The individual act is reconceived from this new viewpoint, as unfolding over four stages: (1) need, (2) design, (3) re‐design, and (4) ending. While analyzing the self's operation during each one of these stages, I take special pains to explain the indispensable part that domination plays in bringing about their interlinkage, without which social acts of either type could not be completed. I argue that radical interactionism offers a more nuanced and realistic conception of the self's functioning during the interlinking of individual acts than its older cousin, symbolic interactionism, because unlike the latter, which rests on the assumption of sociality, the former is based on the assumption of domination. Thus, radical interactionism can much better account for how the self operates during the interlinking of individual acts that end in both conflictive and cooperative social acts and not only one or the other.