Symbolic interactionism is one of the most enduring - and certainly the most sociological - of all social psychologies. In this landmark work, Norman K. Denzin traces its tortured history from its roots in American pragmatism to its present-day encounter with poststructuralism and postmodernism.

Arguing that if interactionism is to continue to thrive and grow it must incorporate elements of post structural and post-modern theory into its underlying views of history, culture and politics, the author develops a research agenda which merges the interactionist sociological imagination with the critical insights on contemporary feminism and cultural studies.

Norman Denzin's programmatic analysis of symbolic interactionism, which develops a politics of interpretation merging theory and practice, will be welcomed by students and scholars in a wide 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.