This paper indicates how practice (treatment, social work) may benefit from the application of notions deriving from symbolic interactionism and Situational Action Theory. I conducted interviews with therapists from a day care treatment centre. The centre offers educational assistance and counselling to children and youth aged from three to eighteen. In the article I present four methods of treatment of children and youth at risk (including juvenile offenders), which I draw from the analysis of in-depth interviews. The professionals who would benefit from applying the ideas presented in the article are probation offi cers, social workers, counsellors, street workers, and therapists.

Identity in the age of globalisation (a report on Manford Kuhn’s Twenty Statements Test taken by the students from Poland and Zimbabwe)

The global reality, and in particular the extensive network of economic, political and also strategic interdependencies, especially over the past several years, has led to a significant conversion of the educational model. As a result of the real changes taking place, whole social categories can be observed, whose life, work and also study are completely uprooted from a specific place and the concept of “we” goes beyond the borders of the local community. This raises the question of the factors that shape the “self” in the changing global world of the 21st century. The aim of this article is to compare the categories within which young people from Poland and Zimbabwe define themselves and to identify the dominant elements of a description of the “self” concept. The research tool is the Twenty Statements Test designed by the symbolic interactionist Manford Kuhn. McPartland’s (1959) codification key is used to interpret the test results.

Daily Life and Some Meanings of the Internet. Visual and Conversational Analysis of a Comic Book Fragment Sent to the All-Polish Sociological Competition “Life in the Internet”

In order to answer the research questions, the visual and conversation analyzes of a part of the selected work of art (a cartoon) were carried out and presented. The work was submitted by a student of an upper-secondary school to the Polish Nationwide Sociological Competition „Life on the Internet” organized by the Institute of Sociology of the University of Economy in Bydgoszcz. The competition had been inspired by the similar undertakings carried out in Poznań by Florian Znaniecki in the beginnings of the 20th century. The project bases on the assumption that the social reality is a creation of constant, everyday interactions taking place between its members and the objects to which social meanings were given. The Internet, still remaining in the phase of social construction, is such an object, too, and the source of meanings for it are the complex interactions between the Internet-users. Therefore, it has been assumed that the users direct their actions towards the object basing on the meaning they have for it. The aim of the paper is to reply to the question of what meanings are socially given to the Internet within the everyday (habitual) social interactions via the text (language), the social actions and the images.

The interactionist approach to deviance is summarized drawing heavily on Blumer’s conception of continual self-indication and Becker’s examination of the socialization of deviants. The concepts of the self, the definition of the situation, significance, reciprocity and interaction constitute an idea of a human being who is best defined by such terms as homo reciprocus (man in interaction), homo symbolicus (symbolic man), homo faber (man the maker) and homo aestimans (man who evaluates). Symbolic interactionism is used to guide professional assessment and intervention by human services professionals. Correction officers, social workers, counselors, street workers, therapists are positions that would apply the ideas presented in the article.