MYTH, TEXT, AND INTERACTION COMPLICITY IN THE NEGLECT OF BLUMER'S MACROSOCIOLOGY

This article depicts a major line of assessment of the work of Herbert Blumer as constituting a series of myths. Portrayals of his work as subjectivistic and ideographic combine with the predominant myth that Blumer ignored issues of large-scale organization and social structure. Documentation of his analyses of corporate power relations, racial stratification, and industrialization and industrial organization reveals the mythical character of much published opinion regarding his work. The micro-macro distinction is an ideology within which these myths have been created and perpetuated. Interactionists who have benignly bought into that ideology contribute to the myth of Blumer's neglect of societal organization. In closing it is suggested that greater attention needs to be given to the influence of Robert Park on Blumer's perspectives and that such an assessment might contribute to a broadening of the base of symbolic interactionism.