38 static; it changes as people are able to change it. Since “cultural values and codes are often subverted, challenged, re-thought, rejected and/or transformed” culture is dynamic and fluid (Fay, 1996:57). People are able to choose for themselves what cultural elements to embrace and reject, they are able to interpret and change them as well as resist and challenge cultural beliefs.
Since selves are porous selves are able to respond to other porous selves. Through social interaction new cultural knowledge is gathered and individuals are able to incorporate that knowledge in their lives. Fay (1996:59) writes that
Another important fact about culture is that they are essentially open. Cultures are ideational entities; such they are permeable, susceptible to influence from other cultures. Wherever exchange among humans occurs, the possibility exists of the influence of one culture by another. Even when such influence does not occur it is because those in one culture consciously reject the foreign or strange culture: but this rejection is itself another way the alien culture interjects itself into the home culture).
Human history is in part the story of the ways different cultural groups have rearranged cultural boundaries by expanding contacts, tolerating outsiders, and fashioning interactive arrangements. Even the creation of stricter boundaries involves mutual impact. The human world is not composed of a motley of independent, encapsulated, free-floating cultures; rather, it is one of constant interplay and exchange.
39 Blumer (1969:70) indicates that joint action “refers to the larger collective form of action that is constituted by the fitting together of the lines of behaviour of separate participants … Each participant necessarily occupies a different position, acts from that position, and engages in a separate and distinctive act. It is the fitting together of these acts and not their commonality that constitutes joint action”. Joint action is produced when individuals are able to align their actions in accordance with the acts of others. This occurs when individuals are able to identify the social act and then interpret and define each other‟s action in forming the act.
Once the individual is able to identify the social act (by observing or by verbal articulation) s/he is in a position to perform the act. The individual then interprets the acts/articulations of others through self-interaction which acts as a guide to direct him/her as to how to act in relation to them (Blumer, 1969:70). Misinterpretation of the act will result in the act not being adequately performed. There will be interaction but actions would not align to one another resulting is confusion.
Blumer (1969:71) indicates that joint action is built or constructed over time by the fitting together of acts which results in the formation of a „career or history‟. Common definitions, constructions, categories or concepts are continuously used which provides individuals “with decisive guidance in directing his own act so as to fit into the acts of others. Such common definitions serve, above everything else, to account for the regularity, stability and repetitiveness of joint action in vast areas of group life” (Blumer, 1969:71).
Since individuals have correctly interpreted what actions to take they are able to produce these actions in habitual conduct. Blumer (1969:70) points out that “joint actions range from a simple collaboration of two individuals to a complex alignment of the acts of huge organisations or institutions”. Hence the fitting together of acts of a multitude of individuals, who have correctly interpreted how to perform the required actions in relation to one another, are able to routinely produce these actions resulting in structures such as an organisation or institution being created. Structures which are created by the collective action of individuals are reproduced on a daily basis forming routine or habitual practices. Thus it can also be argued that micro activities of everyday life reflect the wider social structures that occur (Collins, 1981; Fielding, 1989).
organisation and how work is conducted. If the structure created is successful then other companies would also replicate it thus reforming the ways in which companies organise production.
40 Giddens (1984:26) also indicates that “structure has no existence independent of the knowledge that agents have about what they do in their day-to-day activity”. Structures (in order to exist) require knowledgeable agents who are able to understand and interpret what is required of them in their day-to-day lives. This means that active agents are able to create and reproduce structures (such as the economic and political systems) through social practices.
Fay (1996:65) also states that “structures provide the conditions for the possibility of action and guides as to how actions are performed, but it is the agents who produce and reproduce this structure by means of their activity”. Individuals have particular roles that they perform;
the collective performance or activity of these roles results in the formation of structures. In turn structures guide human activities that are carried on a daily basis in a given society however it is the active agents within society who have the capacity to produce and reproduce these structures.
Blumer (1969:73) also indicates that “any given act has a career in which it is constructed but in which it may be interrupted, held in abeyance, abandoned or recast”. Fine and Klienman (1983:98) also point out that “since meanings provide the basis for individual and collective action, people‟s meanings will have consequences for action, the production of social structure, and changes within those structures”. Through interaction new meanings are formed which produces changes in social structures. Joint action by knowledgeable agents not only produces habitual practices that constitute structure they can also transform, alter, change or terminate structures thus also reforming the ways structures are produced through interaction and the structure within which we live.
Blumer (1969:17) states that “a network or institution does not function automatically because of some inner dynamics or system requirements; it functions because people at different points do something, and what they do is a result of how they define the situation in which they are called to act”. Here Blumer (1969) points out that networks, as social structures, operate due to self-directing individuals who give meaning to their actions. Fine and Klienman (cited in Ritzer, 1996:213) also sees social networks “as a set of social relationships that people endow with meaning and use for personal and/or collective purposes”.
A distinction must be made between the joint micro action and the micro-interactions or interrelations between people. The joint action of people is needed to produce and reproduce
41 structure but the face-to-face interaction should be seen as unique encounters between individuals. Shibutani (1988:24) indicates that “although conventional norms provide a framework of expectations that facilitate joint action in routine settings, what happens in each historical context is unique”. Every time two individuals meet in a working environment, for instance, it gives rise to the formation of new conversations, situations or circumstances as compared to the routine habitual social practices that are conducted by individuals in the workplace and whose joint actions of these practices make up structures.
Fielding (1989:16) also states that “our grasp of events at the interactional level is the strongest”. Since events, situations and social interactions are experienced on a first-hand or face-to-face basis it is consciously felt. Since individuals live it, it becomes a social reality.
Social interaction and the discourses inherent in interaction are significant in shaping how individuals come to view the world and relate to one another. The dialectic process between joint micro action and social structure as well as micro-level social interaction should be taken into consideration in understanding how individuals conduct their lives.