ABSTRACT
Herbert Blumer first used the term ‘symbolic interactionism’ in print in 1937 and later wrote a very influential book revealingly called Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1986 [1969]). The title reaffirms that symbolic interactionism is both a perspective, a way of looking at the social world and a method, a way of gathering data about the social world. When Blumer first coined the term, it was in competition with a similar label, ‘social behaviorism’ that was associated with one of Blumer’s mentors, the Chicago philosopher George Herbert Mead. Blumer’s neologism soon became widely used and, by the mid-1960s, it had all but replaced Mead’s term. However, clearly there is a 20-year period – from the coining of the term to its widespread acceptance – when ‘symbolic interactionism’ had an uncertain existence and scholarly status.
