A SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST APPROACH TO THE RELIGIOUS STRANGER CONCEPT: PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES IN CHINA, 1845-1900

This is a study of American Protestant missionary behavior and career in China during 1845-1900. My research is important to the understanding of the total picture of the American missionary movement, to the concept of the social phenomena of the stranger, and to the interpretation of the peculiar and distinctive character of social interaction between culturally different people. The Methodist mission in China serves as an example of the typical denominational missionary enterprise.; A social psychological approach to missionary behavior and career has seldom been undertaken in a systematic theoretical perspective. This study develops a sociological concept of the missionary as a stranger sub-type, the religious stranger, not as a state, but rather as a social process which links the missionary's felt indentity and image of self with official position, social relations, and style of like in a Chinese setting.; Since my objective is to construct, describe, and interpret practical circumstances and activities, primarily of the male missionary, I deal with an empirical world, defined and described by the missionary, which is available for study and qualitative analysis. In order to present a detailed and accurate description of the missionary's point of view of the situation, to make meaningful the events in the course of a missionary career, and to conceptualize the phenomena of the religious stranger within the broader concept of the stranger, this study utilizes the methodological approaches of symbolic interactionism and its variants, ethnomethodology and phenomenology. Although the materials give witness to individual careers in the making, this approach focuses on multiple individual careers providing us with a basis for comparison out of which emerges a range of career models or ideal types.