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Symbolic Interaction And Social Planning: Perspectives From The Early Years, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The principal thesis of this paper is that the inadequacies of recent efforts at social planning are essential failures of theory, rather than failures of practice. Economic, land use and social welfare planners it is suggested have all shared a common unwillingness or inability to abandon commitments to an essentially utilitarian rhetoric of reasoned behavior, wherein means are matched with ends, persons are viewed as essentially self-interested and goal-directed rational problem solvers operating on schedules of goal attainment known or predictable by the planners. Symbolic interaction theory has resources to revitalize planning theory. Selected publications by John Dewey, G.H. Mead, …