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.     

The Spirit of Blumer's Method as a Guide to Sociological Discovery

Herbert Blumer did not offer textbook-style instructions for how to do research. What he offered, in his classic 1969 essay “The Methodological Position of Symbolic Interactionism,” is a broad account of what research must entail to accord with symbolic interactionist premises that human social life depends on meanings, interpretation, and interaction. Blumer's essay also voices a spirit of research that is ardently empirical, sociological, and creative. It is this spirit, I argue, that holds great value for guiding sociological research toward fresh discoveries. I make this argument by reviewing what Blumer meant by exploration and inspection, and then drawing out five Blumerian principles of inquiry. By embracing these principles we can avoid the problems of inadvertent theorizing, unreflective mesearch, analytic foreclosure, excessive subjectivism, and aprocessuality. I also suggest how we can enhance the sociological value of Blumer's method by paying more attention to power, inequality, and our own institutional biases. Embracing the spirit of Blumer's method, I conclude, can help a new generation of symbolic interactionists do more imaginative and insightful work.     

Cognition in Situations

The symbolic interactionist tradition can contribute to advancing sociological studies of cognition by setting dual process models on more solid ground. I draw on Blumer's epistemological statements and the interactionist tradition more broadly to consider how dual process models of cognition could be applied to naturally occurring situations. I suggest that attending to the ways the past and the future are handled and modified within social interaction provides a usable inroad for the sociology of cognition to engage with situational analysis. I identify “resonance” and “iterative reprocessing” as concepts that are suitable to this end.     

Herbert Blumer and the Study of Fashion: A Reminiscence and A Critique

Recounting my late 1940s graduate student contacts with Herbert Blumer on the topic of fashion, 1 go on to assess his important contribution to the sociological study of fashion. Conceptually rich, the corpus of Blumer's writing on fashion is yet surprisingly small. His major opus on fashion, anticipated only in part by several of his earlier, less exhaustive writings on the subject, did not see print until 1969 with the publication of the justly famous Sociological Quarterly piece “Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection.” There Blumer pursues two aims: (1) to challenge the then prevalent functionalist view of fashion as a “trickle down” symbolic mechanism for effecting social class differentiation, a view associated with such sociological eminences as Simmel and Veblen, and (2) to offer in its place his own quite original approach to fashion as a massive “collective selection” process wherein choices are guided more by the elusive lure of modernity than by invidious class tinctions as such. Prominent among the strengths of Blumer's position is the demonstrably greater empirical validity of “collective selection” as compared to “class differentiation.” Among its shortcomings are Blumer's slighting of a salient social psychological theme in Simmers dialectical approach to fashion and, more important, his failure to address in any sustained way the role of the fashion industry in the fashion process. The recently emerging, symbolic interactionist concept of social world offers a means for redressing this omission and for advancing further upon the ground opened by Herbert Blumer's still exciting breakthrough in the sociology of fashion.     

THE POLITICS OF HERBERT BLUMER'S SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD

Prevailing wisdom among sociologists is that Herbert Blumer's sociology is not useful in modern contexts because he did not provide a method for researching his ideas. This article contends that Blumer's appreciative view of the actor's perspective is a methodological contribution; and that his methodological perspective is political in two respects: it is anti-elitist and democratic.     

Structure,Agency, and Social Reality in Blumerian Symbolic Interactionism: The Influence of Georg Simmel

Mead no doubt had a manifest influence on Blumer's thinking, and Blumer's acknowledgment of his indebtedness to Mead is a central feature of Blumer's writing. While I do not presume to question the importance Blumer assigns to the role played by Mead in the development of Blumerian symbolic interactionism, I argue that the perspective also owes much to the insights of Georg Simmel. In particular, a Simmelian flavor is evident in how Blumer addresses the core sociological issues of the nature of social reality, the nature of the relationship between the individual and society, and the nature of social action.     

Whither Symbolic Interaction? Reflections on a Personal Odyssey

This essay reflects my experiences over fifty‐five years in the world of sociology and sociologists. It assumes these experiences hold more general meaning and so can illuminate the present and anticipate the future of symbolic interactionism. My views of interactionist theory and methods developed in opposition to widely accepted views stemming from Herbert Blumer's writings, creating a cycle of antagonism that impeded communication and learning across the divide. Recently, antagonism apparently has decreased, and respect and trust have increased commensurately If true, the future of symbolic interactionism is brighter, as respect and trust allow the communication and learning from one another that was missing previously.     

MYTH,TEXT, AND INTERACTION COMPLICITY IN THE NEGLECT OF BLUMER'S MACROSOCIOLOGY

This article depicts a major line of assessment of the work of Herbert Blumer as constituting a series of myths. Portrayals of his work as subjectivistic and ideographic combine with the predominant myth that Blumer ignored issues of large-scale organization and social structure. Documentation of his analyses of corporate power relations, racial stratification, and industrialization and industrial organization reveals the mythical character of much published opinion regarding his work. The micro-macro distinction is an ideology within which these myths have been created and perpetuated. Interactionists who have benignly bought into that ideology contribute to the myth of Blumer's neglect of societal organization. In closing it is suggested that greater attention needs to be given to the influence of Robert Park on Blumer's perspectives and that such an assessment might contribute to a broadening of the base of symbolic interactionism.     

Mind,Self, and Human-Animal Joint Action

Abstract

Because Herbert Blumer maintained that symbolic interactionism was useful in examining all realms of social behavior, and advocated what Martin Hammersley refers to as “critical commonsensism,” this paper focuses on one of the most common contemporary social relationships—that between people and companion animals. I first examine the basis for Blumer's (like Mead before him and many interactionist scholars today) exclusion of nonhuman animals from consideration as “authentic” social actors. Primarily employing the recent work of interactionists Eugene Myers, Leslie Irvine, Janet and Steven Alger, and Clinton Sanders, this paper advocates the reasonableness of regarding nonhuman animals as “minded,” in that mind, as Gubrium emphasizes, is a social construction that arises out of interaction. Similarly, I maintain that animals possess an admittedly rudimentary “self.” Here I focus special attention on Irvine's discussion of those “self experiences” that are independent of language and arise out of interaction. Finally, I discuss “joint action” as a key element of people's relationships with companion animals as both the animal and human attempt to assume the perspective of the other, devise related plans of action and definitions of object, and fit together their particular (ideally, shared) goals and collective actions. I stress the ways in which analytic attention to human-animal relationships may expand and enrich the understanding of issues of central sociological interest.     

RECONSIDERING BLUMER'S CORRECTIVE AGAINST THE EXCESSES OF FUNCTIONALISM

Blumer's corrective to Parsons' excesses is presented against a backdrop provided by two reformulations of Parsons' concepts: The problems of social order is recast as the problem of nonauthoritarian social order, and voluntaristic action is distinguished from normative action. Blumer's corrective, then, was to see that distinctively voluntaristic action is ineluctably the product of actors' negotiations of meaning (whereas both purposive-rational and non-rational action can more legitimately be abstracted from this process and treated as more reified by social analyses). Parsons' optimism about social order was unwarranted, as was Blumer's complacency about the problem of arbitrary power. It is suggested in conclusion that Parsons' theory ironically evinces more respect for the individual's integrity than does Blumer's.     

HERBERT BLUMER'S CONCEPTUAL IMPACT

Blumer's conceptual development was particularly crucial to the development of sociology. Despite his many talents, Blumer's importance as a sociologist stems from his profound theoretical contributions. He affected the discipline through his insistence on precision of thought in a field that let fuzzy ideas and meaningless numbers take its place. In addition, he offered a serious axiomatic-deductive theory to sociology. Although we do not always recognize his impact, few sociologists are untouched by his work. Ultimately Blumer's impact is what we make it by our own practice.     

Interpreting definitions of public relations: Self assessment and a symbolic interactionism-based alternative

This article reviews several popular definitions of public relations and explicates the shared elements and assumptions inherent in these definitions. Further, the article presents an alternative conceptualization of public relations based upon Herbert Blumer's symbolic interactionism.The purpose of this essay is to stimulate questioning and self assessment as well as to introduce alternative goals, ideals, and directions for the field of public relations.     

Extending and Broadening Blumer's Conceptualization of Fashion: Adding Notions of Generic Social Process and Semiotic Transformation

Abstract

Herbert Blumer's critics and followers have, for the most part, neglected the significance of his theory of fashion. In this paper I revisit Blumer's thesis on fashion by identifying the fashion process as an instance of the generic social process of semiotic transformation. The concept of semiotic transformation refers to the change in meanings of symbolic objects over time. By identifying six elements of the generic social process of semiotic transformation (systemic permeability, systemic freedom, logonomic fluidity, logonomic openness, indeterminacy, and logonomic hegemony) and by viewing semiotic transformation as a joint act grounded in emergence, I argue that the meaning of change over time is a process structuring both the definition of the situation and symbolic objects. I conclude the paper with a set of reflections on the significance of Blumer's work on fashion for the development of a research agenda of semiotic transformation and for the legacy and reception of Blumerian theory.     

Toward A Renewed Sociological Jurisprudence: From Roscoe Pound to Herbert Blumer and Beyond

This article, based on the Distinguished Lecture presented on August 21, 2001, at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Anaheim, California, proposes a synthesis of Herbert Blumer's macrosociological perspective on the race question with Roscoe Pound's philosophy and science of law (i.e., his so‐called sociological jurisprudence), Joseph Tussman's and Jacobus tenBroek's juridical methodology, and Philip Selznick's sociology of responsive law. The compound so produced will help to establish a foundation for a praxiological sociology of American constitutional law. The article focuses on the problem of legislative‐made “classifications” and their relations to the legitimate public purposes entailed in the enactment of statutes, laws, and decrees. Such classifications become problematic when they are said to be “underinclusive,” “over‐inclusive,” or both in seeking to effect their aims. Strategic research sites for this issue are racial and ethnic classifications that single out one or a limited cluster of racial or ethnic groups for special benefits (“affirmative action”) or restitution (“reparations”). Calling for a reinvigoration of Pound's pragmatic approach to sociological jurisprudence, I show how Blumer's analysis of the “color line”—when seen in relation to the original intent of the makers of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth post‐Civil War Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and, using Tussman's and tenBroek's showing of how such categorizations might be both methodically evaluated and applied to the challenged classifications—provides grounds for reconsidering whether the latter are instances of “reverse discrimination” and, hence, violations of the constitutional requirement of “equal protection of the law.” The science of law is a science of social engineering having to do with that part of the whole field which may be achieved by the ordering of human relations through the action of politically organized society. —Roscoe Pound, Justice According to Law We did not hold it necessary to wait for nature to put a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and we shall not much longer hold it necessary to wait for nature to dig the legal canals that will give security to neglected human interests which clamor for recognition and protection. —Roscoe Pound, “Juristic Problems of National Progress”     

HERBERT BLUMER'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOCIOLOGY

Herbert Blumer's work has had considerable impact on the growth of twentieth-century sociology. He kept alive an interest in George Mead at a time when Pragmatism floundered. Although it is unlikely that Mead's work would have been overlooked, there can be no question that Blumer's forceful advocacy helped bring it to the forefront of modern social thought. Park first organized the subfield of collective behavior, but it was Blumer who kept it going in the face of opposition from structural-functionalism. Whether or not collective behavior endures as a separate area of specialization, sociologists will have to concern themselves with the manner in which human beings adapt to problematic situations. Although his views on methodology have been controversial, some of his positions will probably prevail. His insistence on the direct observation of people in their indigenous settings and his contention that human agency must be taken into account in explanations of social processes are difficult to counter.     

Digitalization as “an Agent of Social Change” in a Supermarket Chain: Applying Blumer's Theory of Industrialization in Contemporary Society

In this article I pursue Blumer's argument in Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change that social changes are the consequence of people's interpretation of technology. By examining oral history interviews with managers and other staff of the British supermarket chain Tesco I explore the relationship between “digitalization” and the organization of the business. The analysis reveals how the interviewees interpreted emerging computing technologies, and how the deployment of these technologies in the business impacted the material and ecological arrangement and the distribution of knowledge in the company. The article ends with a discussion of the relevance of Blumer's framework for contemporary studies of “digitalization” and social change.     

LAW AS SYMBOLIC ACTION: KENNETH BURKE'S SOCIOLOGY OF LAW*

In this paper, I present Kenneth Burke's sociology of law as a critical interactionist alternative to the now dominant functionalist sociology of law. Burke's perspective conceives of the law as a form of symbolic action that contributes much to social order. Further it ties the structure and operation of the law to the ontological symbolicity of human being. Finally I suggest that the use of this theoretical framework in research on the place of law in society will produce results that are both critical and hermeneutic.     

ON SEMIOTICS AND SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

The place of semiotics within symbolic interactionist thought is discussed. The works of Barthes and Baudrillard are examined in terms of their implications for (1) an interactionist theory of the cultural object and (2) an interpretation of consumer relations in the postmodern period. The narrative texts of advertisements for Jack Daniel's Whiskey ** 1 Grateful acknowledgment and appreciation is given to the Jack Daniel Distillery for permission to use their advertising text as it appears on their product.
and Dewar's White Label Scotch *** 2 Grateful acknowledgment and appreciation is given to Dewar's for permission to use their advertising profile of Gary Jobson.
are analyzed in terms of the political economy of the sign suggested by Baudrillard and Barthes. The implications of this analysis for the symbolic interactionist theory of the object and language are discussed. The subject matter that now confronts us supersedes symbolic interaction; rather it is the process surrounding the autonomization of signs; signs that stand for—and refer to—nothing but themselves.     

White Universal Identity as a “Sense of Group Position”

This article seeks to expand upon Blumer's “Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position.” I argue that Blumer's group position model invites us to critically consider the role that dominant group identity and “threats” to identity play in reproducing racial inequalities. Identities seat both material and ideal concerns, and white identities, in particular, may provide “ontological security” that whites will defensively protect. I draw on ethnographic research conducted in 1994–96 in two demographically distinct high schools. Young whites in both schools expressed identities that positioned them as “universal,” and they responded reactively, even prejudicially, when their universal group position was threatened.