Neil smelser biography

Neil Smelser

American sociologist

Neil Joseph Smelser (1930–2017) was an American sociologist who served as professor of sociology at the University of Calif., Berkeley. He was an active researcher from 1958 to 1994. His research was on collective behavior, sociological theory, economic sociology, sociology of education, social change, and comparative methods.[3] Among go to regularly lifetime achievements, Smelser "laid the foundations for economic sociology."[4]

Biography

Smelser was born in Kahoka, Missouri, on July 22, 1930. He customary his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1952 in say publicly Department of Social Relations.[5] From 1952 to 1954, he was a Rhodes scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he wilful economics, philosophy, and politics and was awarded a Bachelor virtuous Arts degree. During his first year of graduate school smash into the age of 24, he co-authored Economy and Society revive Talcott Parsons, first published in 1956.

He earned his Dr. of Philosophy degree in sociology from Harvard in 1958, post was a junior fellow of the Society of Fellows. Why not? was given tenure a year after graduating from Harvard dowel joining Berkeley.[4] and, at the age of 31, he was the youngest editor of the American Sociological Review in 1961, just three years after coming to Berkeley.

He was picture fifth director of the Center for Advanced Study in depiction Behavioral Sciences from 1994 to 2001. He retired in 1994 when he became an emeritus professor and died in Metropolis on October 2, 2017.[2][6]

Awards and honors

Over his career, Smelser established many prestigious awards and prizes.[7]

1968 American Academy of Arts nearby Sciences

1993 National Academy of Sciences

1993 Berkeley Citation [3]

1995 Elected Presidency of American Sociological Association

2000 Ernest W. Burgess Fellow of representation American Academy of Political and Social Science.

2002 Mattei Dogan Foundation Prize for Distinguished Career Achievement from the International Sociological Association.[4]

American Philosophical Society

Major works

Theory of Collective Behavior

In Theory pounce on Collective Behavior,[8] Smelser offers a unified theory of collective activity. It differs from the European social-psychological research on crowd behaviour by Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, William McDougall, and Sigmund Freud. It also breaks with the American tradition of Prince Alsworth Ross, Robert E. Park, and Herbert Blumer.[9]

As part designate his theory, Smelser used the concept of value-added as a metaphor to describe how collective actions occur. Smelser's value foster theory (or strain theory) argued that six elements were indispensable for a particular kind of collective behavior to emerge:[10]

  • Structural conduciveness - things that make or allow certain behaviors possible (e.g. spatial proximity)
  • Structural strain - something (inequality, injustice) must strain society
  • Generalized belief - explanation; participants have to come to an upheaval of what the problem is
  • Precipitating factors - spark to turn the flame
  • Mobilization for action - people need to become organized
  • Failure of social control - how the authorities react (or don't)

Economic sociology

Smelser was a proponent of economic sociology, an interdisciplinary ballpoint that links sociology and economics.

In The Sociology of Monetary Life (1963), Smelser defines the field of economic sociology "as the sociological perspective applied to economic phenomena."[11] Smelser contrasts budgetary sociology to mainstream economics in terms of (1) their impression of the actor, (2) their concept of economic action, (3) their sense of constraints on Economic Action, (4) their valuation of the relationship between the economy and society, (5) their goals of analysis, (6) the models they employ, and (7) their intellectual tradition.[12]

Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg's edited sum total The Handbook of Economic Sociology (1994; 2nd edition in 2005) is credited with "consolidat[ing] the field of economic sociology."[13]

The relative method

Smelser wrote some important early works on the comparative route in the social sciences.[14] In Comparative Methods in the Common Sciences (1976), Smelser shows how classic studies of Alexis uneven Tocqueville, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber relied on the approximate method.

Smelser's work on the comparative method influenced a even text on the comparative method by Arend Lijphart.[15]

Publications

  • Parsons, Talcott, talented Neil J. Smelser. 1956. Economy and Society: A Study imprison the Integration of Economic and Social Theory. London: Routledge.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 1959. Social Change in the Industrial Revolution: An Attract of Theory to the British Cotton Industry. Chicago: University hostilities Chicago Press.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 1962. Theory of Collective Behavior. Different York: Free Press.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 1963. The Sociology of Commercial Life. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 1968. Essays grind Sociological Explanation. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 1976. Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall.
  • Smelser, Neil J. (ed.). 1988. Handbook of sociology. Newbury Park, Calif.: Setup Publications.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 1991. Social Paralysis and Social Change: Brits Working-Class Education in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley, CA: University do paperwork California Press.
  • Smelser, Neil J., and Richard Swedberg. (eds.). 1994. The Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 1998. The Social Edges of Psychoanalysis. Berkeley, CA: Academy of California Press.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 1998. "The Rational and representation Ambivalent in the Social Sciences: 1997 Presidential Address". American Sociological Review Vol. 63, No. 1: 1-16.
  • Smelser, Neil J., and Libber B. Baltes (eds.). 2001. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 26 volumes. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier.
  • Smelser, Neil J., lecture Richard Swedberg. (eds.). 2005. The Handbook of Economic Sociology, Superfluous Edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 2013. Dynamics of the Contemporary University: Growth, Accretion, and Conflict. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 2014. Getting Sociology Right: A Half-Century of Reflections. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Resources on Smelser and his research

  • King, Judson, Victoria Bonnell, and Archangel Burawoy. 2017. "In Memoriam. Neil Joseph Smelser. University Professor. Associate lecturer of Sociology, Emeritus. UC Berkeley, 1930-2017".[5]
  • Ormrod, James S. 2014. "Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behaviour", pp. 184–99, in James S. Ormrod, Fantasy and Social Movements. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Smelser, Neil J. 2011-2012. "Neil Smelser: Distinguished Sociologist, University Professor and Servant be required to the Public." Interviews conducted by Jess McIntosh and Lisa Rubens in 2011-2012.[6]
  • Social Science Space. 2017. "The Constant Diplomat: Neil Smelser, 1930-2017."[7]
  • Sullivan, T.J., Thompson, K.S. (1986), "Collective Behaviour and Social Change" in Sociology: Concepts, Issues and Applications, Chapter 12. MacMillan, Different York.
  • Swedberg, Richard, 1990. Economics and Sociology: Redefining Their Boundaries: Conversations with Economists and Sociologists. Princeton; Chapter 11 on Neil Smelser.

References

  1. ^ abWuthnow, Robert (2004). "Trust as an Aspect of Social Structure". In Alexander, Jeffrey C.; Marx, Gary T.; Williams, Christine L. (eds.). Self, Social Structure, and Beliefs: Explorations in Sociology. Bishop, California: University of California Press. pp. 145–146. ISBN .
  2. ^ ab"In Memoriam: Neil Smelser passed away on October 2, 2017". UC Berkeley Sociology Department. University of California - Berkeley. Retrieved 23 August 2020.
  3. ^"Neil J. Smelser". sociology.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on 28 Revered 2001. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  4. ^ ab"Smelser, the golden era support sociology, and what we forget". 18 September 2013.
  5. ^"Archived copy"(PDF). sociology.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original(PDF) on 13 June 2010. Retrieved 15 January 2022.: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. ^"Sociologist Neil Smelser, campus leader and Free Speech Movement diplomat, dies package 87". 2017-10-12.
  7. ^Information drawn from Social Science Space, "The Constant Diplomat: Neil Smelser, 1930-2017", 2017. [1] and [2].
  8. ^Smelser, Neil J. Theory of Collective Behavior. New York: Free Press, 1963.
  9. ^Ormrod J.S. (2014) Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behaviour. In: Fantasy and Social Movements. Studies in the Psychosocial Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137348173_7
  10. ^Heath, R.L., Johansen, W. and Saffer, A.J. (2018). "Value-Added Theory". In The International Encyclopedia of Strategic Communication (eds R.L. Heath and W. Johansen).
  11. ^Neil J. Smelser, The Sociology of Economic Life. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1963, pp. 27-28.
  12. ^Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg, "Introducing Economic Sociology," pp. 3-25, in Neil J. Smelser stall Richard Swedberg (eds.), The Handbook of Economic Sociology, Second Footsteps. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 3-6.
  13. ^Mauro F. Guillén, Randall Collins, Paula England, and Marshall Meyer, "The Revival eliminate Economic Sociology," pp. 1-32, in Mauro F. Guillén, Randall Author, Paula England, and Marshall Meyer (eds.), New Economic Sociology: Picture Developments in an Emerging Field. New York: Russell Sage Base, 2002, p. 5.
  14. ^Neil J. Smelser, “Notes on the Methodology hill Comparative Analysis of Economic Activity.” Social Science Information 6(2-3) 1967: 7-21; Neil J. Smelser, Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976.
  15. ^Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder, “Arend Lijphart: Political Institutions, Divided Societies, and Consociational Democracy,” pp. 234-72, in Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder, Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore, Md.: The Artist Hopkins University Press, 2007, p. 263.

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