Herbert Blumer

Who was Herbert Blumer?

Herbert George Blumer was an American sociologist whose main scholarly interests were symbolic interactionism and methods of social research. Believing that individuals create their own social reality through collective and individual action, he was an avid interpreter and proponent of George Herbert Mead’s work on symbolic interactionism. Blumer eventually became the leading symbolic interactionist of his time and wrote the book Symbolic Interactionism, which is known as the clearest theoretical statement of symbolic interactionism. An ongoing theme throughout his work, he argued that the creation of social reality is a continuous process. Blumer was most scrutinized for his negative critiques of positivistic social research.