Discuss the areas Simmel, Weber, and Parsons influenced within Blau’s body of work. Also explain the areas where Blau and Homans’s respective works coincide and deviate from one another.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Blau shared Simmel’s commitment to uncovering the basic forms of interaction through which individuals pursue their interests. Likewise he would endorse Simmel’s assertion that in exchange relations lay “the purest and most concentrated form of all human interactions” (1900/1971:43). his analysis of society’s structural properties was most influenced by Max Weber (1864–1920) and Talcott Parsons. From them he developed his analysis of the role of power and norms of legitimation in shaping group processes. Following the work of both Weber and Talcott Parsons, Blau argues that legitimate authority—a superior’s right to demand compliance from subordinates and their willing obedience—is based on shared norms that constrain an individual’s response to issued directives. Like Homans, Blau was interested in examining the processes that guide face-to-face interaction. And like Homans, Blau argued that such interaction is shaped by a reciprocal exchange of rewards, both tangible and intangible. On these points, Homans was an important influence on Blau’s work. However, the differences between the two exchange theorists outnumber the similarities. While Homans was interested in studying exchange relations in order to uncover the behaviorist principles that underlie interaction, Blau sought to derive from his analysis of social interaction a better understanding of the complex institutions and organizations that develop out of simpler exchange relations between individuals. Moreover, Blau not only abandoned Homans’s brand of behavioral psychology, but in recognizing that imbalances of rewards and costs often pervade exchange relations, he also emphasized the role that power, inequality, and norms of legitimation play in interaction.