Blumer was born March 7, 1900 in St. Louis, Missouri. He lived there with his parents and attended the University of Missouri from 1918 to 1922. After graduation, he secured a teaching position there, but in 1925 he relocated to the University of Chicago where he was greatly influenced by sociologists George Herbert Mead, W. I. Thomas, and Robert Park. Upon completing his doctorate in 1928, he accepted a teaching position at the University of Chicago, where he continued his own research and the work of Mead. Blumer was the secretary treasurer of the American Sociological Association from 1930-1935, and was the editor of the American Journal of Sociology from 1941-1952. 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. Herbert Blumer died on April 13, 1987.

Symbolic interactionism

Blumer invented the term symbolic interactionism in 1937. He was working from Mead's understanding of the individual as an actor, and the importance of empirical observation. He saw humans acting towards social objects in terms of the meaning they attribute to those objects, rather than their intrinsic character. Inspired by former students, Blumer decided to present his articles on symbolic interactionism in a single volume. In this volume, Blumer broke symbolic interactionism down into three premises:

• Humans behave according to the meanings that things and events have for them.
• Individual meanings of things and events stem from interaction with others.
• Meanings entail interpretation rather than simple literal compliance with standardized expectations.

He defined interpretation in two ways, the first being the actor's identification of the objects in a situation that has meaning. The second is an internal communication with him or herself to decide which meaningful object to respond to. Blumer identified symbolic interaction as a uniquely human process because it requires the definition and interpretation of language and gestures, and the determination of the meaning of the actions of others. Humans must be able to understand each other, because social life is a "fluid and negotiated process." It is common for individuals to try to fit their actions and behaviors to those with whom their interacting. Blumer thought that symbolic interactionism could only be approached empirically, because to conceptualize human interactions you must observe them in action. He said,

"Human groups of society exist in action and must be seen in terms of action...A cardinal principle of symbolic interactionism is that any empirically oriented scheme of human society, however derived, must respect the fact that in the first and last instances human society consists of people engaging in action."

According to Blumer there were two types of interactionism, symbolic and non-symbolic. Non-symbolic interactionism is non-reflective responsiveness to the action of another or others, whereas with symbolic interactionism there is an interactive response. Blumer believed there was no need to adopt scientific techniques and methods to observe symbolic interactionism; all you needed was a direct, empirical study.

Criticisms of symbolic interactionism

Blumer's idea is criticized for putting too much emphasis on day-to-day life and the social formation of the individual while ignoring social structure. He also tended to ignore class relations, and the restraints brought about by differing social classes. Some critics believe that Blumer deviated from Mead's ideas of scientific behaviorism, and which has not led to the development of any useful concepts based on the observations of overt behavior.

Blumer's criticisms of Thomas and Znaniecki

In 1939, Blumer published Critiques of Research in the Social Sciences: An Appraisal of Thomas and Znaniecki's The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, criticizing what at the time was a popular social theory. Blumer claimed that Thomas and Znaniecki failed to properly distinguish between attitude as subjective and value as a societal collective element. He said they used the terms interchangeably, and therefore making the theory unreliable. It is difficult to disentangle subjective factors and objective correlates because the objective world is dealt with only to the extent that it enters subjective experiences. Blumer said,

:"This scheme declares that a value playing upon a pre-existing attitude gives rise to a new attitude, or an attitude playing upon a pre-existing value gives rise to a new value. With terms that are uncertain and not clearly disjunctive, the presumed causal relation becomes suspect."

In conclusion, Blumer recognized that in society there was no clear distinction between attitude and value, and that even social theorists have difficulty distinguishing between the two.

Movies and Conduct

Another of Blumer's best-known studies was part of the Payne Fund research project, which was a result of fears about the effect of movies on children and young adults. The project included more than 18 social scientists who produced eleven published reports. In Blumer's study, Movies and Conduct (1933), more than fifteen hundred college and high school students wrote autobiographies of their movie-going experiences. He uncovered that movies teach children things about life: attitudes, hairstyles, how to kiss, even how to pickpocket.

• The Methodology of Herbert Blumer by Kenneth Baugh, Jr, 1990. ISBN 0521382467
• Griffin, E. (1997). A First Look at Communication Theory. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies.
• Lyman, Stanford M. and Arthur J. Vidich (1988). Social Order and the Public Philosophy: An Analysis and Interpretation of the Work of Herbert Blumer. The University of Arkansas Press.
• "The Dilemma of Qualitative Method: Herbert Blumer and the Chicago Tradition. Martyn Hammersley." A review by Carl J. Couch. Contemporary Sociology, 20-1. (Jan., 1991), pp. 160—161.

• Gerhardt, Eta.(2000). Ambivalent Interactionist: Anselm Strauss and the "Schools" of Chicago Sociology. http://springerlink.com/content/vxu8gq4bg4g5mpfy/fulltext.pdf.