SERIES EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
It is honor to write this brief introduction to Studies in Symbolic
Interaction, Volume 44, “Reflections on Methods.” The European Society
for the Study of Symbolic Interaction was launched in 2010. The sixth
international meetings will be held in 2015 in Manchester, England.
The papers on this volume were presented in July 2012 at the third
conference of the European Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction
(SSSI). The theme of the 2012 conference was “Conflict, Cooperation and
Transformation in Everyday Life.” Thaddeus Mu ̈ller’s outstanding intro-
duction speaks to the diversity and breadth of interactionist thought in
contemporary Europe. Although narrow definitions persist, for most in the
European interactionist community Symbolic Interactionism is more than
Mead, Cooley, and Blumer. Indeed the papers in this volume speak to
work in autoethnography, action research, social constructionism, phenom-
enology, ethics, and deviance.
It is fitting that the proceedings from 2012 Meetings of the European
Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction be represented in Volumes 44
and 45 ofStudies in Symbolic Interaction. Symbolic Interactionism’s roots
in European social thought run deep. Consider the record. Three of
the founding fathers of Symbolic Interactionism, William James, George
Herbert Mead, and Robert E. Park, studied in European universities.
Florian Znaniecki, co-author of the multi-volumePolish Peasant, was a
leading Polish intellectual before he immigrated to the United States.
Georg Simmel’s formal sociology influenced the Chicago school of
Sociology. Alfred Schutz’ readings of Mead and James moved their work
into European phenomenological thought.
The bookIntroduction to the Science of Sociology(1921) by Park and
Burgess became a bible for the Chicago School and it introduced American
Sociologists to the working of leading European social thinkers: Spencer,
Comte, Bergson, Le Bon. The list is long.
And now European interactionists reach out and move this trans-
Atlantic framework back to its original home, fitting interactionist formu-
lations to various European contexts. The papers in this volume will surely
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