Essays on Blumer

Understanding society, and indeed the world, is a complex task that is unlikely to ever be fully achieved. There are various social theories that work to explain the workings of society, three of which are structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. The structural functional approach works on the idea that society is made up of systems that are beneficial to all concerned. However, there are substantial problems with this theory, as it does not acknowledge that certain structures need to change even if they seem to be working for the majority. Conflict theory asserts that society functions based ...

Symbolic interaction theory can be described as a theory, which connects language with thinking, perception, and culture. The theory traces its origins from the philosophers such Charles H. Cooley, George H. Mead, Herbert Blumer, and John Dewey. The theory reflects the interpersonal communication, that is, the communication, which entails two or more individuals exchanging information. The symbolic interaction theory centers on human thought as well as interpersonal communication. In particular, this theory tries to describe human communication between the individuals who have some relationship. It offers insights regarding human communication behavior in a range of contexts. The symbolic interaction ...

Introduction

Marriage proves to be a complex and dynamic institution. The involvement of two people and their decision to live together entails not only the love the couple share but also their individual differences and preferences. Living together with anyone under any circumstances whether marriage, cohabiting, cost sharing with friends in a college room among other life situations that require people to live under the same roof and room evokes difficulties in one way or the other. The individuals living together are prone to fall into disagreements that are at time exaggerated and even violent. When it comes to marriage, ...

Introduction

Management science and organizational behavior are important features in a productive business enterprise. As a part of a team several times in my life, experiences had taught me to place a great deal of emphasis on control either I have been the person in control as exemplified in the playground photo or the person controlled through the administration for the educational system in the form of education. . The third photo is the ultimate control involving money and wealth which people seek in order to facilitate life’s necessities and enjoyments. Financial rewards are very often the controlling factor in ...

Charles Manson is the son of careless and indifferent prostitute. He is born in 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Young Charles has never known who is his real father, and has spent his first years of life in shelters. He firstly showed his rebellious nature at school. His transition from childhood to adolescence was marked by numerous crimes and several sentences in correctional facilities for juvenile delinquents. In March 1951, the court decided to send Charlie to educational school for boys in Washington. The following year, just a few days before his release, Manson raped another young boy at the same ...

First, Middle and Last Name of Student

Introduction Racial and ethnic relations have been studied from the beginnings of the 20th century, and the way it has been studied has undergone many changes over the years. While these relations were studied as an ideological means to assert one race’s superiority over the other, with the civil rights movements and the influx of immigrants in many western societies, the study of race and ethnic relations have taken much more complex dimensions such as perceptions of people about racial compositions, perceptions of risk and fear of crime, and the interrelations and interconnectedness through social interactions between ...

Following the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines

Throughout the history of psychological discovery, psychologists have proposed many ideas. One such theory, named by Herbert Blumer, is referred to as Social Interactionist Theory. Through the work of Blumer, as well as the efforts of George Herbert Mead, Blumer’s teacher, and Mead’s cohort, Charles Horton Cooley, the trio was able to devise an idea that explained our social selves and the world we inhabit. Unlike psychologists before them, Mead and Cooley attempted to explain human development and interaction as it occurred in small groups, rather than attaching people as one single unit. The theory also attempted ...

Introduction

Sociology is the study of human groups and their interaction with one another. Different people have a differing view of the world from an outside point of view, what is popularly called, social imagination or perception. The different theories in sociology avail the various sociological perspectives through which human beings view the social world. Bluntly stated, a perspective is basically a way of looking or viewing the world. As such, sociological perspectives make it possible for human beings to predict and explain the social world in which they inhabit. To this end, there are three major sociological perspectives to explain this social ...

Introduction

Herbert Blumer was an American sociologist with interests in interactionism and methods of social research. He believed that people create their own social reality through both group and individual action. Through his work, he stressed that the creation of social reality is a continuous process and always criticized the positivistic social research approach. He believed that applying positivistic methods to social research would create results that could be ignorant of empirical realities of the social world. According to him, it’s the examination of the empirical world demands that one should be put in a theoretical form with no conventional protocol ...

Description of the theory

A theory is an ideology or system of ideas developed by an individual to explain a phenomenon. Symbolic interaction theory was established by sociologist known as George Herbert Mead, who up to date is considered one of the great sociologists on earth. This theory states that symbolic interaction is the process of the interaction information of meanings for individuals. He says that people tend to behave in a particular manner or act to a situation based on the symbolic meaning they relate to a situation. Meanings and symbols allow individual to carry out the distinctively human action (Herman 2003). The reason for people ...

Introduction

Symbolic interactionism is essentially a sociological perspective, which is influential in numerous areas of this discipline. The theory as thought of George Mead and Herbert Blumer is actually the process of interaction or relations in formation of meanings for the individuals. Herbert Blumer, an interpreter and a student of Mead, devised the term “symbolic interactionism” and with influence of John Dewey who argued, that we are understood best in relation to our environment outlined the term as a study of the human group life as well as conduct. For this reason, this essay relates this theory to the topic, “Measuring Peer Pressure, ...

Sociology

The individual’s actions, daily routines, habits and competencies play a central role in the society. The actions, habits, rituals, competencies, expertise, abilities and thinking of people are considered as the building blocks of social structures. They are the small units from which a huge unit i.e., whole society emerge and any changes and modifications in these small units also influences the big unit and lead to reproduction and re-structuring of the society. In this paper the role our individual actions, routine works, habits, and aptitude are discussed in detail and their influence for reproducing the society is explained. Social actions ...

Background

Witness Protection Programs are an extension of law enforcement that is shrouded in secrecy. Originally developed to protect organized crime witnesses, these programs now have wider application (UN, 2008). In criminal cases involving members of organized crime, witnesses testify at risk to their own lives, or personal safety, as well as those close to them. This is not the only group with whom a witness may find themselves, and their families, in peril. Over the years, Witness Protection has evolved to also include other well-resourced individuals and groups who are facing criminal conviction, such as despots and war criminals finding ...

Part 1- Gender discrimination

Introduction Evidences of gender discrimination are obvious in many societies. Social structure has encouraged discrimination among women. It would appear to be a man’s world in many instances. Politics is a male dominated institution. In some societies women could not vote. Many industries did not accept women employees claiming they could not function as efficiently as men due to lack of education. However, society has converged into male dominated occupations as well as female ones too. Therefore, it can be argued that from an employment perspective gender discrimination affects men just as women to some degree.

Theoretical applications

Symbolic interactionists theory ...

Defining Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism can be defined as a belief of ideology that upholds the superiority on one’s own culture or viewing it as superior to any other culture. Racism and ethnocentrism in America or any other modern Western society was never simply based on individual prejudices, attitudes and emotions, but was always structural and institutional, especially toward blacks in housing, jobs, education and the criminal justice system (LeVine & Campbell 1971). Blacks in the U.S. face severe economic and social discrimination, which dates back to the era of slavery and segregation. In the past, Jews, Asians and other immigrants who were considered ‘ ...

Factors that explain that violence is a Social Problem

Violence may result from social factors such as unemployment, working conditions that are poor, political differences, financial problems and drugs. According to World Bank (79), the linkage between violence and unemployment involves exclusion and social identity. Employment cannot be entirely viewed as a financial matter. Employment should be viewed as a social matter since it involves aspects of social relations such as a person’s expectations and personal status. Unemployment becomes a factor that results to recruitment of individuals into gangs. According to the World Bank (79), studies indicate that criminal violence is strongly linked to persons with low income. Most people are ...

Question 1

Symbolic interaction theory views society as the conglomeration of all of the different ways that individual people interact with one another. The pioneers of this theory were Max Weber and George Herbert Mead, but the person to give this theory its name was Herbert Blumer, who summarized it like this: people tend to treat things according to the significance that those things have from their perspective. This significance comes through social interaction and can change over time as the interpretation of those things varies over time (Nelson). Blumer outlined three tenets of this theory:

People assign significance based on interaction with others.

Interaction with others shapes the ...

11th July, 2011

Sociological Movie Analysis: Passion of the Christ

Introduction

The film viewed is called “Passion of the Christ.” Mel Gibson presents the passion which is known by Christians as the sacred crucifixion of their Lord and Savior by Jews who did not accept him as the messiah. The major plot and characters were deducted from accounts given in the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Scenes included Sermon on the Mount; Mary Magdalene and the last supper. (Passion of the Christ) The predominant sociological perspective as espoused by the author is religion. In this discussion Functionalist theory of Herbert Spencer and Talcott Parson ...

Abstract

When the concept paradigm is used in Sociology it denotes theoretical perspectives pertaining to social phenomenon. In regard to Foundational paradigms Masters of Sociological Theory offers two distinct categories for consideration irrespective of whether it is a classical or contemporary framework. (Cozier,) They are Functionalism and conflict. Foundation sociological thought projects that society or institutions can operate based only from these two major paradigms even though other schools of thought project some eleven in the social sciences. (Tang, 2010). The church as a sociological entity then can be viewed from either paradigms as attempts are made to fulfill its role in ...