Beyond action

Abstract

Isaac Reed, like the great early work of Talcott Parsons, is focused on social action and continental theorization and largely blind to the broader American interactionist tradition. Absent are Blumer, Dewey, Mead, James (though Peirce appears fleetingly), or the more phenomenological tradition of Schutz or Garfinkel. Absent too is the relational theorizing of gender and race scholars. Given all that is in Reed, it is absurd to suggest that there isn’t enough. The point of this paper is different. It is simply that there are alternate important traditions that ethnographic work draws upon that might aid in pushing Reed’s arguments in different directions. I hope to show how an interactionalist perspective proves fruitful in moving us beyond some of the basic challenges of the classical tradition.