Normative Expectations and the Emergence of Meaning as Solutions to Problems: Convergence of Structural and Interactionist Views

Structural and interactionist approaches to role theory are often considered fundamentally incompatible. This paper argues that the two are compatible and complementary. Structural role theory has come to regard inter-and intrarole conflict as the natural state of affairs; thus conformity to internalized norms has been undermined as an explanatory device and as the image of the actor's generic orientation to the normative order. In structural theory, systematic stability and patterned conduct are explained by structural mechanisms that ameliorate the adverse consequences of conflicting expectations. The question of how the actor copes with conflicting expectations is not addressed in middle-range structural theory, although it is implied as a conceptual problem. Interactionists, have addressed the negotiation of meaning in interaction as the actor's practical solution to the problems caused by conflicting social pressures. Negotiated meanings do not replace conflicting expectations, but coexist with them as a working consensus among actors concerning how conflicts are to be resolved in particular situations, despite their several preferences. The development of the working consensus and the symbolic representation of conflicting models of what ought to be the case are implications of the model of the pragmatic actor developed by George Herbert Mead.