Symbolic Interactionism Perspective and Method HERBERT BLUMER University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1969 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey First Paperback Printing 1986 ISBN 0-520-05676-0 (alk. paper) Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 76-80731 Printed in the United States of America 4 5 6 7 8 9 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. © To My Daughter, Katherine Hade Preface Ihe present volume is being published in response to many requests from former students and from professional colleagues whom I have not been privileged to have as students. They have asked that I make available to them in a single book several of my articles now scattered in different publications, indicating that such an arrangement would be beneficial to them and to their students. In responding to their requests I have selected from my articles those which deal with aspects of symbolic interactionism or with methodo­ logical problems. These two areas of scholarly interest have been of major concern to me since my graduate days, when I wrote a doctoral dissertation on "Method in Social Psychology." The linking of these two concerns is not a marriage of convenience however but a genuine union. It is my conviction that an empirical science neces­ sarily has to respect the nature of the empirical world that is its object of study. In my judgment symbolic interactionism shows that respect for the nature of human group life and conduct. But that respect necessitates, in turn, the development of a methodological perspective congruent with the nature of the empirical world under study. Various of my articles, chiefly those brought together in this volume, touch in one way or another on the point of view of sym­ bolic interactionism or on methodological matters related to that point of view. I wrote each of these articles, however, for a specific purpose. Thus, even when grouped together they do not give the unified picture I have sought to present to graduate students over four decades of instruction. In a partial effort to fill this need I have prepared a lengthy introductory essay for the present volume. This essay is the only previously unpublished body of writing in the volume. I recommend that the essay be read first in order to grasp the import of any of the subsequent articles. I wish to thank those of my former students who spurred and prodded me to publish this volume. They are many, and it would be pretentious to list their names. I feel called on, however, to single out the two who have been most persistent over the years in making this request: Tamotsu Shibutani and Howard Becker. To their names I add that of my friend James Clark, formerly of Prentice- Hall, who above all has pressed me gently but unrelentingly to bring out this set of my writings. In the light of these solicitations I can honestly disclaim responsibility if the publication of the present volume becomes an unsuccessful venture. HERBERT BLUMER Berkeley, California Contents 1 THE METHODOLOGICAL POSITION OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM 2 SOCIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE THOUGHT OF GEORGE HERBERT MEAD 61 3 SOCIETY AS SYMBOLIC INTERACTION 78 4 ATTITUDES AND THE SOCIAL ACT 90 5 PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPORT OF THE HUMAN GROUP 101 6 AN APPRAISAL OF THOMAS AND ZNANIECKI'S THE POLISH PEASANT IN EUROPE AND AMERICA 117 ix 7 SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AND THE "VARIABLE" 8 WHAT IS WRONG WITH SOCIAL THEORY? 140 SCIENCE WITHOUT CONCEPTS 10 THE PROBLEM OF THE CONCEPT IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 11 SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STUDY OF MASS-MEDIA EFFECTS 12 PUBLIC OPINION AND PUBLIC OPINION POLLING Symbolic Interactionism 1 The Methodological Position of Symbolic Interactionism 1 he term "symbolic interactionism" has come into use as a label for a relatively distinctive approach to the study of human group life and human conduct.* The scholars who have used the ap­ proach or contributed to its intellectual foundation are many, and include such notable American figures as George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, W. I. Thomas, Robert E. Park, William James, Charles Horton Cooley, Florian Znaniecki, James Mark Baldwin, Robert Redfield, and Louis Wirth. Despite significant differences in the thought of such scholars, there is a great similarity in the general way in which they viewed and studied human group life. The con­ cept of symbolic interactionism is built around this strand of general similarity. There has been no clear formulation of the position of symbolic interactionism, and above all, a reasoned statement of the methodological position of this approach is lacking. This essay is an effort to develop such a statement. I rely chiefly on the thought of George Herbert Mead who, above all others, laid the foundations of the symbolic interactionist approach, but I have been compelled to develop my own version, dealing explicitly with many crucial mat­ ters that were only implicit in the thought of Mead and others, and * The term "symbolic interactionism" is a somewhat barbaric neologism that I coined in an offhand way in an article written in MAN AND SOCIETY (Emerson P. Schmidt, ed. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937). The term somehow caught on and is now in general use. covering critical topics with which they were not concerned. Thus, to a major extent I must bear full responsibility for the views and analyses presented here. This is especially true of my treatment of methodology; the discussion of this topic is solely my own. My scheme of treatment is first to outline the nature of symbolic inter- actionism, next to identify the guiding principles of methodology in the case of empirical science, and finally to deal specifically with the methodological position of symbolic interactionism. THE NATURE OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM Symbolic interactionism rests in the last analysis on three simple premises. The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them. Such things include everything that the human being may note in his world—physical objects, such as trees or chairs; other human beings, such as a mother or a store clerk; categories of human beings, such as friends or enemies; institutions, as a school or a government; guiding ideals, such as individual independence or honesty; activi­ ties of others, such as their commands or requests; and such situ­ ations as an individual encounters in his daily life. The second premise is that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one's fellows. The third premise is that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters. I wish to discuss briefly each of these three fundamental premises. It would seem that few scholars would see anything wrong with the first premise—that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings which these things have for them. Yet, oddly enough, this simple view is ignored or played down in j ractically all of the thought and work in contemporary social science and psycho­ logical science. Meaning is either taken for granted and thus pushed aside as unimportant or it is regarded as a mere neutral link between the factors responsible for human behavior and this behavior as the product of such factors. We can see this clearly in the predominant posture of psychological and social science today. Common to both of these fields is the tendency to treat human behavior as the prod- THE METHODOLOGICAL POSITION OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTION ISM uct of various factors that play upon human beings; concern is with the behavior and with the factors regarded as producing them. Thus, psychologists turn to such factors as stimuli, attitudes, con­ scious or unconscious motives, various kinds of psychological inputs, perception and cognition, and various features of personal organiza­ tion to account for given forms or instances of human conduct. In a similar fashion sociologists rely on such factors as social position, status demands, social roles, cultural prescriptions, norms and values, social pressures, and group affiliation to provide such explanations. In both such typical psychological and sociological explanations the meanings of things for the human beings who are acting are either bypassed or swallowed up in the factors used to account for their behavior. If one declares that the given kinds of behavior are the result of the particular factors regarded as producing them, there is no need to concern oneself with the meaning of the things toward which human beings act; one merely identifies the initiating factors and the resulting behavior. Or one may, if pressed, seek to accom­ modate the element of meaning by lodging it in the initiating factors or by regarding it as a neutral link intervening between the initiating factors and the behavior they are alleged to produce. In the first of these latter cases the meaning disappears by being merged into the initiating or causative factors; in the second case meaning becomes a mere transmission link that can be ignored in favor of the initiating factors. The position of symbolic interactionism, in contrast, is that the meanings that things have for human beings are central in their own right. To ignore the meaning of the things toward which people act is seen as falsifying the behavior under study. To bypass the mean­ ing in favor of factors alleged to produce the behavior is seen as a grievous neglect of the role of meaning in the formation of behavior.