Horst Jürgen Helle (born July 19, 1934) is a German sociologist, who is currently Professor Emeritus at the

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Career

Horst Helle received a business degree from the

university A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

in his hometown of

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

before receiving an MBA from the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. Tw ...

on a Fulbright Scholarship, 1956-1957. Thereupon, he returned to the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...

and obtained the Ph.D. in sociology as well as the license to teach sociology as

Privatdozent ''Privatdozent'' (for men) or ''Privatdozentin'' (for women), abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz., is an academic title conferred at some European universities, especially in German-speaking countries, to someone who holds certain formal qualific ...

. He has since held tenured professorships at the

RWTH Aachen University RWTH Aachen University (), also known as North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Technical University of Aachen, University of Aachen, or ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hoch ...

, the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

, and the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's List of universities in Germany, sixth-oldest u ...

where, between 1973 and 2002, he was Professor of Sociology and Co-director of the Institute for Sociology. Over the course of his career, Helle has also taught at universities in several other countries, including a year as a research fellow at the

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 ...

and, since 1996, in mainland

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Contributions to sociology

Helle's work is mainly concerned with analyzing the development 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 ...

since

Herbert Blumer Herbert George Blumer (March 7, 1900 – April 13, 1987) was an American sociologist whose main scholarly interests were symbolic interactionism and methods of social research. Believing that individuals create social reality through collective ...

, although he does not single out Blumer's contribution. Instead the latter is positioned and discussed in the context of the evolution of the so-called '

Verstehen ''Verstehen'' (, ), in the context of German philosophy and social sciences in general, has been used since the late 19th century – in English as in German – with the particular sense of the "interpretive or participatory" examination of socia ...

' tradition of interpretive sociology. Helle has specifically looked at the path taken by European sociology in its tension between

positivism Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...

and

neo-Kantianism In late modern continental philosophy, neo-Kantianism (german: Neukantianismus) was a revival of the 18th-century philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The Neo-Kantians sought to develop and clarify Kant's theories, particularly his concept of the "thin ...

since the writing of

Georg Simmel Georg Simmel (; ; 1 March 1858 – 26 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic. Simmel was influential in the field of sociology. Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach l ...

. He connects this tradition to Blumer's indebtedness to

George Herbert Mead George Herbert Mead (February 27, 1863 – April 26, 1931) was an American philosopher, Sociology, sociologist, and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatism, pragmati ...

, the widely acknowledged “father” of Symbolic Interactionism. In this theoretical continuity Helle also discusses the work of

Anselm Strauss Anselm Leonard Strauss (December 18, 1916 – September 5, 1996) was an American sociologist professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) internationally known as a medical sociologist (especially for his pioneering attention t ...

Tamotsu Shibutani Tamotsu Shibutani (15 October 1920 – 8 August 2004) was a Japanese American sociologist working on the tradition of symbolic interactionism. Biography Born in 1920, Shibutani majored in sociology and philosophy at the University of California ...

and, particularly,

Erving Goffman Erving Goffman (11 June 1922 – 19 November 1982) was a Canadian-born sociology, sociologist, Social psychology (sociology), social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth ...

. Most of Helle’s substantive work has centered on

cultural change Culture change is a term used in public policy making that emphasizes the influence of cultural capital on individual and community behavior. It has been sometimes called repositioning of culture, which means the reconstruction of the cultural conce ...

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

, the family, and recently mainland

.Horst Helle website - Forschungsgebiete
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Selected bibliography

*''Verstehende Soziologie und Theorie der Symbolischen Interaktion''. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1977. *''Symbolic Interaction and Verstehen''. Frankfurt am Main/New York: Peter Lang, 2005. *
Messages from Georg Simmel
'. Leiden: Brill, 2013. *
China: Promise or Threat? A Comparison of Cultures
'. Leiden: Brill, 2016. *''Refugees, Religions, and Social Change: Essays on China and the Failing West''. Munich, 2019.

References

External links

Horst Helle Website
* ttp://cdclv.unlv.edu/archives/interactionism/biographies/helle_abio.pdf Horst J. Helle - A Journey into Sociology {{DEFAULTSORT:Helle, Horst German sociologists University of Kansas alumni 1934 births Living people Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich faculty University of Hamburg alumni