Symbolic interactionism is one of the most enduring - and certainlythe most sociological - of all social psychologies. In thislandmark work, Norman K. Denzin traces its tortured history fromits roots in American pragmatism to its present-day encounter withpoststructuralism and postmodernism.

Arguing that if interactionism is to continue to thrive and growit must incorporate elements of post structural and post-moderntheory into its underlying views of history, culture and politics,the author develops a research agenda which merges theinteractionist sociological imagination with the critical insightson contemporary feminism and cultural studies.

Norman Denzin's programmatic analysis of symbolicinteractionism, which develops a politics of interpretation mergingtheory and practice, will be welcomed by students and scholars in awide range of disciplines, from sociology to cultural studies.

Norman Denzin is Professor of Sociology, Communications and Humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of numerous books, including Sociological Methods: The Research Act; Interpretive Interactionism; The Recovering Alcoholic; and The Alcoholic Self, which won the Cooley Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in 1988. He is the editor of Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Research Journal and The Sociological Quaterly.