Herbert Blumer

Ellwood was a University of Chicago alumnus (PhD 1899) who advised Blumer on his academic future.

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.

Blumer was born March 7, 1900, in St. Louis, Missouri.

He grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, with his parents.

He moved to Webster Groves with his family in 1905 onto a farm, but his father commuted to St. Louis every day to run a cabinet-making business.

Blumer attended Webster Groves High School and later the University of Missouri from 1918 to 1922.

Herbert Blumer was constantly being grounded in the world of economics and labor, insofar as having to drop out of high school to help his father's woodworking shop which was recovering from a fire.

Moreover, during the summer, Blumer worked as a copy typist to pay for his college education.

While studying undergraduate at the University of Missouri, Blumer was fortunate enough to work with Charles Ellwood, a sociologist, and Max Meyer, a psychologist.

Upon his graduation in 1921 with a bachelor's degree and in 1922 with a master's degree (both from the University of Missouri), Blumer secured a teaching position at the University of Missouri.

Then, in 1925, he relocated to the University of Chicago, a university where he was greatly influenced by the social psychologist George Herbert Mead and sociologists W. I. Thomas and Robert Park.

During much of the period that Blumer was at the University of Chicago from, 1925 through 1933, including all of the years that he was completing his doctorate, Blumer played football professionally for the Chicago Cardinals, now known as the Arizona Cardinals, a team in the National Football League.

He had to career touchdowns both in the 1925 season.

The first was in the 4th quarter of a game against the Milwaukee Badgers with a distance of under 3 yards.

The second was in the second quarter of another game with against the Badgers which was 30+ yards in distance.

Both touchdowns were via the quarterback, Red Dunn.

Blumer played as an end, guard, and a series of other positions.

He had 4 jersey numbers over the course of his career, numbers 8, 20, 17,15.

During his first year of his doctorate, he also scored two touchdowns for the Cardinals.

During that season, the Cardinals won the league championship—although that victory remains controversial due to the disqualification of the Pottsville Maroons, a team with a better record.

Blumer taught at this institution from 1927 to 1952.

Upon completing his doctorate in 1928, he accepted a teaching position at the University of Chicago, where he continued his own research under Mead and became captivated with the prospects of examining the interactions between humans and the world.

Blumer was selected to the 1929 All-Pro Team.

Blumer was the secretary treasurer of the American Sociological Association from 1930 to 1935 and was the editor of the American Journal of Sociology from 1941 to 1952.

Blumer played 59 games over the course of his career and retired in 1933.

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Awards

During World War II, he had a role as an arbitrator for the national steel industry, eventually becoming the Chairman of the Board of Arbitration from 1945 until 1947.

Blumer served as the 46th president of the American Sociological Association and his Presidential Address was his paper "Sociological Analysis and the 'Variable'".

In 1952, he moved from the University of Chicago and presided and developed the newly formed Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1952, he became the president of the American Sociological Association and he received the association's award for a Career of Distinguished Scholarship in 1983.

Blumer was also elected as the President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 1954 and of the Pacific Sociological Society in 1971.

He was said to be "the only white man whom Malcolm X trusted".

After his death, he was credited with establishing the reputation of the University of California at Berkeley Sociology Department by the 1960s.

Blumer was appointed the first chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, a post he held until he retired in 1967.

With Emeritus Professor status until 1986, Blumer continued to be actively engaged in writing and research until shortly before his death on April 13, 1987.