How was symbolic interactionism historically constituted?What are its main theoretical axes?How did Georg Simmel's work influence its founders?What is ethnomethodology?

As an important current of American sociology, symbolic interactionism is one of the forms of comprehensive sociology. In this book, David Le Breton traces the history of its development, from pragmatist philosophies and the Chicago School, to introduce its key concepts, as well as its main authors. Through an in-depth study of Erving Goffman's "social dramaturgy" and Howard Becker's labeling theory, he shows how his analyses, based on field studies, have profoundly renewed the focus on "deviance" and education, but also on medicine, disease, institutions, work, and art.