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■Since 1960's，Symbolic Interactionism (SI) has come to the forefront as an alternative sociological and social psychological perspective not only in American Sociology，but also in Sociology of the world. In the beginning，many scholars in the field drew fundamental ideas mainly and approvingly from Blumer's works，especially，from his 'three premises.' However 1970's and 1980's have brought many criticisms of the perspective. Therefore，SI needed to reconsider and re-develop its perspective and method in response to the criticisms. Among those criticisms，two of those have become common and popular as the labels characterizing both Blumer's SI and SI as a whole. That is，on the one hand，SI has been seen as one of the subjectivist theories，and on the other hand，it has been called micro-sociology by its very nature. In sum，there are four challenges facing Blumer's SI:
■i) theorizing the influences of social structures on self-interaction;
■ii) theorizing the influences of self-interaction on social structures;
■iii) theorizing the social structure itself; and
■iv) consideration of the 'approach from “the positions of the actors'" in relationship to the macro-sociological version of SI's perspective.
■The main purpose of this paper is to examine Blumer's SI and to show the way in which his perspective (and method) should be reconsidered.[http://hdl.handle.net/10232/8983]

■The main purpose of this study is to examine the theory of Symbolic Interactionism formulated by Herbert Blumer, from the following viewpoints:
■a) How does Symbolic Interactionism explain the concept of socialization, i.e., the process in which hominids become human beings?
■b) How does Symbolic Interactionism explain the concept of Vergesellschaftung (Simmel, G.), i.e., the process or mechanism through which people construct human society?
■c) Why is human society to be considered to be a changeable process?
■After careful examination, the following findings were made:
■i) Blumer regards socialization as the process in which the two frameworks or perspectives (schemes of definition and generalized roles) that have been acquired by an actor through interactions with groups of others guide his/her interpretations/definitions.
■ii) In Blumer's theory, society is seen to be possible only when each of the actors in interactions can properly grasp the two standpoints (that of the other and one's own standpoint in the eyes of the other) by doing a kind of self-interaction (i.e., taking into account of taking into account; the concept taking into account of taking into account is the famous terminology used by N. Luhmann, but it was originally formulated by Blumer himself in 1953).
■iii) Because of the nature of others (black boxness), all the actors interacting with others are seen to be necessarily forced to revise their interpretations/definitions continually. For this reason, society must be regarded as a changeable process.
■Finally, we have tried to review critically the research method of Symbolic Interactionism (i.e., the approach from the standpoint of the actor) on the basis of the conception of man and society that has been clarified in the earlier chapters of this paper. Our review provides evidence for the two additional points listed below:
■iv) in doing the approach from the standpoint of the actor, only an individual can be included into the category of the acting unit.
■v) the standpoint of the actor perceived by researchers must never be seen as the standpoint in the raw but has to be seen as a kind of reconstruction of constructions created by researchers.
■We finally have confirmed that testing this conception of man and society (i, ii, and iii noted above) empirically, based on the points iv and v, would (and must) be one of our important tasks in future. In addition, this paper is the 'corrected' edition of the next article: Tsukasa Kuwabara, 2001, Introduction to a sociological perspective of Symbolic Interactionism (3)(The Summary of a doctoral dissertation, Tohoku University) KEIZAIGAKU-RONSHU~ OF KAGOSHIMA UNIVERSITY, 54〔Corrected Edition〕.[http://hdl.handle.net/10232/11867]

Academic Qualifications

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(1) Kumamoto University (1988,4～1993,3).
(2) Auditing student at the graduate school of Kumamoto University (1993,4～1994,3).
(3) Master's course at the graduate school of Tohoku University (1994,4～1996,3).
(4) Doctoral course at the graduate school of Tohoku University, coursework completed without degree (1996,4～1999,3).
(5) Ph.D. obtained in March 2000.