George caspar homans biography

Homans meaning

Entering Harvard University in to read English, Homans was to spend the rest of his academic career there. He became a junior fellow in sociology in ; was invited to become a professor of sociology in ; and, with a gap of four years serving in the naval reserve, he remained a faculty member until he retired in Homans made a major contribution to the deepening of small group theory and research — and through this to a growing sophistication of practice with the field of social groupwork.

He also explored the activities of individuals in his influential work Social Behaviour ; The development there of social exchange theory proved to be influential with several, later theories including rational-choice theory drawing upon it. The first of these was the physiologist cum sociologist Lawrence J. Aside from introducing him to the work of the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, Henderson also impressed upon Homans the doctrine of the notion of the conceptual scheme.

A conceptual scheme consists of a classification of variables or concepts that need to be taken into account when studying a set of phenomena. It also consists of a sketch of the given conditions within which the phenomena are to be analyzed. Finally, it must contain a statement that the variables are related to one another—and following Pareto, that relationship is usually seen as one of mutual dependence.

George homans contribution

Following Pareto, Henderson believed that the subject of interest in sociology—be that a society, a community, or a group—is best conceptualized as a social system. One post-college intellectual influence on George C. Homans that is highly significant to his social exchange theory is the behavioural psychology of B. Homans first met and became friends with Skinner when their terms in the elite Harvard Society of Fellows overlapped, George C.

This is not to say that the latter are not real only that they are created by individuals. Once created, social structures exert back effects on the behaviour of their makers Homans ix.