ABSTRACT
The most important philosophical influence on the development of Chicago sociology, and on Blumer’s methodological ideas, was pragmatism. It was from pragmatism that Blumer and other Chicagoans derived many of their ideas about the character of human social life, and some of their methodological ideas too. In the list of writers to whom Blumer ascribes the development of symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969a:1), pragmatists abound: most notably James, Dewey, Mead, and Cooley. Even late on in his life, Blumer still thought of himself as a pragmatist (Verhoeven 1980:9).
