Introduction: Statement of the Problem

　It is generally said that the history of American sociology for about 20 years from World War I to the mid-1930s can be virtually depicted as the history of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. According to Coser, during this period, the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago "set the general trend in sociological research and published the only professional journal of sociology [i.e., the American Journal of Sociology]. Most of the sociologists who left their mark on the department and became presidents of the American Sociological Association were educated here. Its professors wrote some of the most influential monographs and textbooks" (Coser, 1978=1981, p. 91). However, though the so-called "golden age" of the Chicago School lasted until the mid-1930s, as structural functionalist sociology, led by T. Parsons, took its place as the main paradigm of American sociology, the Chicago School rapidly went into decline. As functionalist sociology became the main paradigm of American sociology, the Chicago School began to decline rapidly and was gradually forgotten by the American sociological circle (Yoshihara, 1994, pp. 53, 73). After a gap of several decades after the war, the Chicago School came back into the spotlight. Such a trend is what Faris calls a "rediscovery of the intellectual heritage of the Chicago School" (Faris, 1967=1990, pp. 16, 17). According to Yoshihara, such a trend is worthy of being called the "Chicago Renaissance" because "in addition to being swimming with the tide of post-Parsons sociology, it encompasses the possibility of diverse intersections with the frontiers of contemporary sociology" (Yoshihara, 1994, p. 5, 3). . There are two currents in this "Chicago Renaissance." One of them is the "Fourth Generation" of the Chicago School, led by M. Janowitz, which is said to have contributed to the revival of theoretical and empirical research in the field of urban sociology. Another stream is Symbolic Interactionism, represented by Herbert Blumer 1). In modern sociology, which is said to be in "a state of rivalry of local barons or of letting a hundred schools of thought contend" (Aoi, 1993, p. 602), symbolic interactionism is considered to be "one of the major trends in modern sociology today" (Funatsu, 1993, p. 45). In particular, it is said that it has had a manifest and latent influence on "various schools of sociology and social psychology, such as phenomenological sociology, ethnomethodology, hermeneutic sociology, role theory, labeling theory, and gender theory" (Goto, 1991, pp. 274-275). According to Mamoru Funatsu, who is regarded as "the most precise and systematic exponent of the sociological theory of symbolic interactionism in Japan" (Ehara, 1986, p. 64), symbolic interactionism includes, four schools: the Chicago school, which tries to theoretically elucidate active nature of human agency; the Iowa school, which engages in empirical and experimental research; and the Illinois school, which aims to develop its own social behaviorism by reexamining Mead's theory in relation to Watson's behaviorism; and the Drama School, which considers human action as acting or performing and society as a drama consisting of such acts tries to elucidate those in specific interaction situations (Funatsu, 1995, p. 4). Among these numerous symbolic interaction theories, "what expresses the characteristics of contemporary symbolic interaction theory in its entirety, surpassing the others in terms of comprehensiveness and systematicity, and is a great tree on which today's symbolic interaction theory depends "(Funatsu, 1976, p. 40), is none other than the symbolic interaction theory of Herbert George Blumer (1900-1987). It is Blumer's symbolic interaction theory that Denzin refers to as constituting "the traditional idea of symbolic interaction theory" (Denzin, 1989b=1992, p. viii). http://archive.ph/vwkZq#selection-483.0-509.357