definition of the situation

views updated

definition of the situation A concept first developed by William Isaac Thomas and Florian Znaniecki in The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918–20). There are two sides to a situation: one is objective, while the other is subjective, where an individual ‘has to take social meanings into account and interpret his experience not exclusively in terms of his own needs and wishes but also in terms of the traditions, customs, beliefs, and aspirations of his social milieu’. Most significantly the concept was used to formulate an early version of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

More From encyclopedia.com