56 Facts About Peter Blau

Peter Michael Blau was an Austrian and American sociologist and theorist.

Peter Blau completed his PhD doctoral thesis with Robert K Merton at Columbia University in 1952, laying an early theory for the dynamics of bureaucracy.

Peter Blau taught as Pitt Professor at Cambridge University in Great Britain, as a senior fellow at King's College, and as a Distinguished Honorary professor at Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences which he helped to establish.

Peter Blau formulated theories relating to many aspects of social phenomena, including upward mobility, occupational opportunity, and heterogeneity.

Peter Blau was one of the first sociological theorists to use high level statistics to develop sociology as a scientific discipline using macro-level empirical data to gird theory.

Peter Blau produced theories on how population structures can influence human behavior.

Peter Blau was the first to map out the wide variety of social forces, dubbed "Blau space" by Miller McPherson.

Peter Blau-space is still used as a guide by sociologists and has been expanded to include areas of sociology never specifically covered by Peter Blau himself.

In 1974 Peter Blau served as the 65th president of the American Sociological Association.

Peter Blau was born in 1918 in Vienna, a few months before the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed.

Peter Blau was raised in a Jewish family as fascist power within Europe grew and Hitler's influence within Austria became increasingly evident.

At the age of seventeen, Peter Blau was convicted of high treason for speaking out against government repression in articles he wrote for an underground newspaper of the Social Democratic Worker's Party and was incarcerated.

Peter Blau was given a ten-year sentence in the federal prison in Vienna.

Peter Blau was then released shortly after his imprisonment when the ban on political activity was lifted due to the National Socialists' rise to power.

When Nazi Germany annexed Austria, Peter Blau attempted to escape to Czechoslovakia on March 13,1938.

Peter Blau emigrated to America on the Degrasse ship and landed in New York on January 1,1939.

Peter Blau later attended Elmhurst College, earning his degree in sociology in 1942, and becoming a United States citizen in 1943.

Peter Blau returned to Europe 1942 as a member of the United States Army, acting as an interrogator given his skills in the German language and was awarded the bronze star for his duties.

Exchange and Power in Social Life was an important contribution to contemporary exchange theory, one of Peter Blau's distinguished theoretical orientations.

Peter Blau was very active in the study of structural theory.

Peter Blau's 1977 book, Inequality and Heterogeneity, presents "a macro sociological theory of social structure" where the foundation of his theory "is a quantitative conception of social structure in terms of the distributions of people among social positions that affect their social relations".

Peter Blau received notable distinctions for his achievements, which include: election to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

Peter Blau served as the president of the American Sociological Association from 1973 to 1974.

Peter Blau died on March 12,2002, of acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Peter Blau began theoretical studies by making a broad statement or basic assumption regarding the social world, which was then proven by the logical predictions it produced.

Peter Blau claimed these statements could not be validated or refuted based on one empirical test.

Peter Blau focused his sociological theory on both the micro and macro level, and often connected the two throughout his research.

Peter Blau believed that population structure created guidelines for specific human behaviors, especially intergroup relations.

Peter Blau created a number of theories explaining aspects of population structure that increased chances of intergroup relations.

Peter Blau viewed social structure as being somewhat stable, but he did identify two phenomena that he believed contributed to structural change within a population: social mobility and conflict.

Peter Blau thought social mobility, which he described as "any movement within a population by an individual," was beneficial to intergroup relations within a population structure, and theorized various scenarios involving social relations and mobility.

Peter Blau theorized explanations for structural causes of conflict, focusing on population distribution as a cause of conflict separate from individual or political issues.

Peter Blau determined that prevention of conflict within a population structure can be achieved through "multi-group affiliations and intersection in complex societies".

Social exchange provides an explanation of the interactions and relationships Peter Blau observed while researching.

Peter Blau believed that social exchange could reflect behavior oriented to socially mediated goals.

Peter Blau started from the premise that social interaction has value to people, and he explored the forms and sources of this value in order to understand collective outcomes, such as the distribution of power in a society.

People engage in social interactions in which we would not think deep about, but Peter Blau suggested it is for the same reason why people engage in economic transactions.

Peter Blau expressed the difference between social exchange and the purchasing of goods, stating that there is an emotional component within social exchange that is nonexistent in everyday transactions.

Peter Blau believed that most thriving friendships occur when both participants are the same status level, allowing for an equal potential for exchange and benefit throughout the relationship.

Peter Blau studied the social exchange of partners, and how these relationships come together in the first place.

Peter Blau explains how loving relationships come to existence through the exchange of certain favorable traits that would attract one person to another.

Peter Blau discusses how status, beauty, and wealth are some of the key characteristics that people search for in a partner, and that the most successful relationships occur when both partners have valuable attributes that they can benefit from.

Peter Blau conducted a different approach in the main subject group for organizational sociology, focusing far more on white-collar workers rather than those of the blue-collar status, concentrating on the relationships between workers.

Peter Blau discussed how the incipient status systems formed were important to the continued functioning of these organizations as the formal status structure.

Hence, much of Peter Blau's work involving organizations centered on the interplay between formal structure, informal practices, and bureaucratic pressures and how these processes affect organizational change.

Peter Blau collected data on 53 Employment Security Agencies in the US and 1,201 local offices.

Peter Blau derived several generalizations, the most important which are increasing size results in an increase in the number of distinct positions in an organization at a decreasing rate, and as size increases the administrative component decreases.

Probably one of the biggest contributions Peter Blau gave to sociology was his work in macrostructural theory.

Peter Blau believed that the root of social structure can be found whenever an undifferentiated group begins to separate itself along some socially relevant distinction.

Peter Blau's theory gave a more structured idea of "homophily" which describes the observation that people are drawn to others like themselves.

Peter Blau coined the term "parameter of social structure" to refer to socially relevant positions that people could be classified as.

Peter Blau played an important role in shaping the field of modern sociology and is one of the most influential post-war American sociologists.

Peter Blau is sometimes considered the last great "grand theorist" of twentieth century American sociology.

Peter Blau provided an exemplar of how to do research and how to build theory.

Peter Blau proved that general and valuable deductive theory was possible in sociology.

Peter Blau eventually paved the way for many young sociologists that then used similar styles of research and deductive theory.