HERBERT BLUMER: A PILGRIMAGE WITH PRAGMATISM

This article is an examination of Herbert Blumer's lifelong effort to perpetuate pragmatism raises serious questions about the future of the social sciences. He tried, through critical analyses, to tell social scientists how to make their fields scientific. Opposition to this effort was overwhelming and eventually weakened his own perspective and thus his influence in the discipline. The story of Blumer provides several lessons for future social scientists. It is intended that these lessons to be useful to those who still believe in a scientific social science.     

SUBSTANCE AND STYLE: AN APPRAISAL OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL LEGACY OF HERBERT BLUMER

The substance and the style of Herbert Blumer's legacy to sociology are examined. Examining the former proceeds by specifying essentials and nonessentials of a symbolic interactionist framework, and by distinguishing between Blumer's ideas that do and do not contribute toward the objective of general explanatory theory premised on the framework together with rigorous tests of such theory using a full arsenal of research methods and techniques. Examining the latter proceeds by suggesting that Blumer's style of combative and oppositional argumentation, while not without its utility, has contributed to a present-day scholasticism within symbolic interactionism that inhibits the development of the framework.     

HERBERT G. BLUMER (1900–1987): A LEGACY OF CONCEPTS,CRITICISMS, AND CONTRIBUTIONS

This article introduces a collection of articles written in honor of Herbert Blumer. It is noted what contributing authors identify as strengths and weaknesses of his theoretical and methodological analyses. Emphasized, however, is his view of reality as an ongoing emergent process. This view, coupled with his fundamental pragmatist stance, are the unifying and enduring themes in his life work. Blumer's impact on the social sciences will grow as more scholars become familiar with the full range of his ideas.     

THE "CONSULTING-YOUR-CONSULTANTS INTERVIEW": A FINAL NARRATIVE CONVERSATION WITH GRADUATING FAMILY THERAPY MASTERS' STUDENTS

In this article, we discuss a Masters' exit interview in which we use questions adopted from narrative therapy to celebrate the transition of Masters' students into the world of marital and family therapy professionals. We are finding that this process helps us underline our students' agency and competence. Also, since the process elevates students to the level of consultants during the interview, it invites them to see themselves as experts in their own right.     

SIBLING THERAPY WITH MULTIPROBLEM FAMILIES*

Most family therapy deals with the parent-child system. However, with chaotic multiproblem families, this often is not possible. When parents refuse to, or cannot, participate in the therapy, working with just the siblings (Sibling Therapy) offers one way to provide help to troubled children. When parents offer inconsistent or inadequate nuturing, seeing the children together is a way of developing or strengthening the bonds among them and teaching them how to be available to each other. This article proposes setting treatment goals that are consistent with the cultural and family styles of these children, describes methods for developing caring and cohesion, and presents techniques for working with these children.     

DIFFICULTIES WITH TESTING FOR CAUSATION*

This paper examines the use of econometric tests for causality that are based on the work of Granger and Sims. The main conclusion is that it is not possible to infer the direction of causation from observed correlations. There are two reasons why the causality tests cannot reveal the direction of causation from observed correlations. First, the null hypothesis tested is necessary but not sufficient to imply causality. Second, any specification error renders the causality test results uninterpretable.     

NURTURANCE: A NEGLECTED DIMENSION IN FAMILY THERAPY WITH ADOLESCENTS*

This paper offers a model for integrating a nurturance framework into family therapy approaches with adolescents. This approach is seen as adding an important but neglected dimension to commonly used approaches, thus increasing both flexibility in treatment and the likelihood of a positive outcome. Steps to an effective treatment approach are outlined and guidelines offered for both in-session work and out-of-session tasks.     

WORKING WITH MEN IN FAMILY THERAPY: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY*

The results of this exploratory research provide a beginning formulation of a gender-sensitive approach to working with men in family therapy. A panel of 36 family therapists endorsed 131 interventions as appropriate and effective ways to work with men. The results suggest the importance of therapist awareness of gender issues and socialization in working with male clients. Interventions were highly endorsed in the areas of developing therapist perceptual and conceptual skills regarding gender, promoting mutual responsibility, and challenging stereo-typical behaviors and attitudes. Surprisingly few interventions pertaining to structuring treatment and encouraging affective expression in men had sufficient consensus to be included in the final results.     

LIFE ON THE LINE: THE THERAPEUTIC POTENTIALS OF COMPUTER MEDIATED CONVERSATION

In what ways are computer networking practices comparable to face-to-face therapy? With the exponential increase in computer-mediated communication and the increasing numbers of people joining topically based computer networks, the potential for grass-roots therapeutic (or antitherapeutic) interchange is greatly augmented. Here we report the results of research into exchanges on an electronic bulletin board devoted to the topic of suicide. Over an 11-month period participants offered each other valuable resources in terms of validation of experience, sympathy, acceptance, and encouragement. They also asked provocative questions and furnished broad-ranging advice. Hostile entires were rare. However, there were few communiqués that parallel the changeinducing practices more frequent within many therapeutic settings. In effect, on-line dialogues seemed more sustaining than transforming. Further limits and potentials of on-line communication are explored.     

"MEN I MESS WITH DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH AIDS":

Pivotal in HIV/STD intervention and prevention is how individuals perceive risk. This article discusses how ethnotheory can be used to understand the underpinnings of risk perception from the subject's perspective. Ethnotheory's theoretical and methodological character extends present models used to explain sex-related HIV behaviors and provides insights into risk perception useful for the development of effective intervention strategies. Four detailed ethnographic excerpts from low-income African American and Mexican American men and women illustrate how people form perceptions of risk and how information gained through ethnotheory is useful in the design of culturally relevant interventions.     

ATTRIBUTIONAL EFFECTS OF THERAPY WITH INCESTUOUS FAMILIES*

This study examines the effects of a self-help program, Parents United, on the members of families in which incest has occurred. Fifty-six male incest offenders, including three grandfathers, and thirty-five spouses were studied to assess the impact of the program on participants' attributions of responsibility for incest, changes in family relationships, and subsequent referral and recidivism. The program was successful in increasing participants' feelings of responsibility, and decreasing recidivism, but less successful in keeping the families together.     

LE CONTE,ROYCE, TEGGART,BLUMER: A BERKELEY DIALOGUE ON SOCIOLOGY,SOCIAL CHANGE,AND SYMBOLIC INTERACTION

The tradition of sociological discourse at the University of California at Berkeley antedates departmentalization by-more than seven decades. Berkeley's sociology is treated in this article as a dialogue with the ghost of Comte, embracing the works of Joseph Le Conte, Josiah Royce, Frederick Teggart, and Herbert Blumer. That dialogue ultimately produced a prolegomena to a phenomenological theory of social change that has yet to be fully developed. The central concepts of this incipient theory of social change are “release and reverie.” The dimensions and potentiality for this theory are elaborated, and the contribution of Berkeley's sociology to macrosociological issues is indicated.