Critiques of Research in the Social Sciences: An Appraisal of Thomas and Znaniecki's The Polish Peasant in Europe and America

by Herbert Blumer

Foreword By Edmund E. Day. Summary And Analysis By Read Bain. Additional Contributors Are Gordon W. Allport, George P. Murdock, And Malcolm M. Willey. Social Science Research Council, Bulletin No. 44.

210 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Herbert George Blumer 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.