ABSTRACT
In the course of analyzing "macro" level social phenomena, one of which is industrialization, Herbert Blumer developed his core ideas for a recursive model of social organization that accentuates the interdependence of social process and social structure. Blumer's analysis in fundamental ways resembles Thomas and Zna-niecki's classic The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, which presented the first empirically grounded causal model in the history of American sociology. Adjustment and emergence are universal features in Blumer's general theory of society and are associated with both persistence and change. In Blumer's view both persistence and change are processes, and together they constitute emerging social reality. Reality in general and social reality in particular are formative and emergent at all levels of society. For Blumer, social structure is action; it is an ongoing, recurrent pattern of happenings constituted by people meeting and handling situations.
