Tamotsu Shibutani (15 October 1920 – 8 August 2004) was a

Japanese American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...

sociologist working on the tradition of

symbolic interactionism Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...

Biography

Born in 1920, Shibutani majored in sociology and philosophy at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

. He was sent with his family to the Tule Lake internment camp in 1942 during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, following the signing of

Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain ...

. After the war, Shibutani obtained his doctorate at

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, completing his degree in 1948. He taught there for a few years and then moved to the University of California at Berkeley. While at Chicago and Berkeley, he published two influential books: ''Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor'' (1966) and ''The Derelicts of Company K: A Sociological Study of Demoralization'' (1978). He later was a professor in the Department of Sociology at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

. In 2004, Shibutani died at the age of 83 in

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara ( es, Santa Bárbara, meaning "Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coas ...

Publications

*''Society and Personality: an interactionist approach to social psychology (1961) *''Ethnic Stratification: a comparative approach'' (1965) *''Improvised News: a sociological study of rumor''(1966) *''Human Nature and Collective Behavior; papers in honor of Herbert Blumer''(1970) *''The Derelicts of Company K: a sociological study of demoralization'' (1978) *''Social Processes: An Introduction to Sociology'' (1986)

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:shibutani, Tamotsu 1920 births 2004 deaths Japanese-American internees University of Chicago alumni American academics of Japanese descent University of California, Berkeley alumni