Herbert Blumer
Herbert Blumer | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 7, 1900 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | April 13, 1987 (aged 87) Danville, California, U.S. |
| Spouses | Marguerite Barnett (m. 1922)Marcia Jackson (m. 1943) |
| Children | 3 |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Missouri (AB, MA) University of Chicago (PhD) |
| Influences | George Herbert Mead, W. I. Thomas, Charles H. Cooley, Robert Park, Georg Simmel, John Dewey, Charles Ellwood |
| Academic work | |
| School or tradition | Chicago School of Sociology |
| Institutions | American Sociological Association University of Missouri University of Chicago University of California at Berkeley |
| Main interests | Sociology, symbolic interactionism, sociological research methods |
| Influenced | Erving Goffman, Anselm Strauss, Howard S. Becker, Tamotsu Shibutani |
Herbert George Blumer (March 7, 1900 – April 13, 1987) was an American sociologist whose main scholarly interests were symbolic interactionism and methods of social research. Believing that individuals create social reality through collective and individual action, he was an avid interpreter and proponent of George Herbert Mead's social psychology, which he labeled symbolic interactionism. Blumer elaborated and developed this line of thought in a series of articles, many of which were brought together in the book Symbolic Interactionism. An ongoing theme throughout his work, he argued that the creation of social reality is a continuous process. Blumer was also a vociferous critic of positivistic methodological ideas in sociology.