Tamotsu Shibutani

Tamotsu Shibutani
Born	1920 California, United States of America
Died	2004
Occupation	Professor of Sociology University of California Santa Barbara
Notable work	Society and Personality (1961)

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 at Berkeley. He was sent with his family to the Tule Lake internment camp in 1942 during World War II.

After the war, Shibutani obtained his doctorate at University of Chicago, 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.

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

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)