CHARACTER AS A SOCIOLOGICAL PHENOMENON: AN INTERACTIONIST ANALYSIS OF SEMINARY LIFE

Abstract

<p>In the social sciences, the dominant approach to the study of character—people’s</p> <p>essential interactional dispositions, especially of a moral and durable nature—has been to</p> <p>treat it as a set of objective dispositions lodged within the individual. This dissertation</p> <p>challenges the objectivist orthodoxy in the study of character by examining it from a</p> <p>symbolic interactionist perspective (Mead 1934; Blumer 1969; Strauss 1993). Drawing on</p> <p>14 months of ethnographic research in two Protestant Christian seminaries as an</p> <p>empirical case, I find that character is ultimately a matter of audience definition, a selfother</p> <p>dispositional designation achieved in social interaction. Three empirical papers</p> <p>examine specific aspects of the character-making process. The first paper considers</p> <p>character as a contingency influencing people’s trajectories of involvement in group life.</p> <p>The second paper examines how ministry students define and experience character</p> <p>formation in the seminary. The third paper analyzes how character problems are</p> <p>identified and responded to in the seminary.</p>