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The Faultline of Consciousness: A View of Interactionism in Sociology by David Maines (Paperback, 2001)

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Title: The Faultline of Consciousness. Each chapter is designed to articulate this view of the field. First, people transform themselves: people are self-aware beings who reflexively form their conduct and thus are capable of adjusting their lines of action and creating new ones.

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For the past 70-80 years, the field of sociology has been thoroughly constructionist, in the sense that all sociological paradigms locate their explanations of the social in social phenomena themselves. However, the discipline has developed a conceptual dichotomy, wherein practitioners describe work as falling into social constructionist or nonconstructionist categories. The relation between these categories represents what Maines calls a faultline of consciousness, and he argues that this faultline tends to hide sociology's constructionist nature from itself. In examining much of the contemporary literature in so-called mainline sociology, he finds an increasing trend toward the use of standard concepts and propositions once held almost solely by pragmatist and interactionists. He proposes here not only that the field as a whole become more interactionist, but that it never had any realistic option other than to do so. Retracing the theories of Mead, Blumer, and Park, the author reveals an enduring sociological relevance that has been hidden in professional myth and rhetoric, and argues that scholarly progress cannot be demonstrated in substantive terms but only rhetorically claimed, and thus can be understood today only as a political sociology of knowledge. Maines provides an array of empirical studies drawn from pragmatist and interactionist precepts to illustrate how a credible general sociology can be framed and developed. This book is not about interactionism per se; rather, it is an invitation to reconsider the promise of a more mature general sociology, one that has a chance to develop systematically rather than haphazardly and without direction. Regardless of where one stands on interactionism itself, the methodological strength and vivid presentation will earn this book a place in courses in method and in theory.