Abstract
As sociologists we know that people are connected both to and through society. Individuals share much in the way of values and understandings of the world and their actions generally appear to be coordinated—yet human actors are more than well-socialized cogs in a machine. The symbolic interactionist perspective helps us understand relationships between the individual and the larger society as dynamic. This theoretical perspective views concepts of self, social situations, and society as accomplished through people’s actions and interactions. Through its concepts and guiding assumptions, symbolic interactionism fosters theoretically-driven research with implications for medical sociology, which we address here.