Understanding Social Interaction and Qualitative Research
Social interaction is not haphazard but structured, occurring in context and making sense of meanings. It refers to daily routines, events, and objects perceived as relevant and meaningful. Interaction is built through the interaction of the protagonists.
Structuralism
Structuralist approaches incorporate cultural frameworks of social achievements and subjective reality. Cultural systems of meanings are part of perception, subjective reality construction, and social development. They distinguish between deep and surface structures of individual experience.
The aim of structuralists is to analyze the researcher’s relationship with those observed to unravel the mechanisms of social production of the unconscious. Constructing rules involves applying analytical tools, possible with detailed material that becomes the main goal of structural social research.
The Contribution of Goffman
Goffman significantly contributed to qualitative research, particularly on verbal social interaction. Notable works include The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Frame Analysis, and Stigma.
If qualitative social research interprets structures in the world of subjectivity, and subjects generate the social world through the meaning they attach to actions, objects, and people, then the social world is a constant negotiation seeking consensus on attributed meanings.
In face-to-face contacts, individuals tend to act through what Goffman called a ‘line’: a pattern of verbal and nonverbal acts expressing their opinion.
Social and conversational interaction is regulated by small structures of social life, or ‘frames,’ which give meaning to talks, creating self-territories: linguistic, bodily, and spatial.
Therefore, the researcher needs to know the procedures and conventions in the context to access knowledge.
In social work, Goffman’s work Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, on social stigma and personal identity, is of great importance, especially concerning discredited or discreditable stigmatized individuals.
Qualitative Research and Social Work
There has been debate over whether social work is a science or merely a consumer of scientific knowledge.
The scientific method plays a central role in two moments of the process: diagnosis and evaluation.
Diagnosis aims to delve deeper into the conditions of reality or the social situation intended for intervention.
Evaluation research aims to develop an explanation about the planned objectives and achievements after the action.
Steps in Social Work:
- Initial contact and review of the situation amenable to intervention.
- Diagnostic status (context).
- Development of an intervention project.
- Performance or project implementation.
- Evaluation of results after project execution.
Although timing is usually maintained, it is not a sine qua non, as each stage may feed back into the remaining phases.
The social worker, in most cases, cannot be a psychologist, sociologist, manager, educator, and consultant simultaneously. They are often employees engaged in providing personal services related to social welfare and, in some cases, specific social protection services such as social service systems.