Max Weber in America

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Scaff
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
The United States ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science And Culture ◽  
Source Of Information

Max Weber, widely considered a founder of sociology and the modern social sciences, visited the United States in 1904 with his wife Marianne. The trip was a turning point in Weber's life and it played a pivotal role in shaping his ideas, yet until now virtually the only source of information about the trip was Marianne Weber's faithful, but not always reliable, 1926 biography of her husband. The book carefully reconstructs this important episode in Weber's career, and shows how the subsequent critical reception of Weber's work was as American a story as the trip itself. The book provides new details about Weber's visit to the United States—what he did, what he saw, whom he met and why, and how these experiences profoundly influenced Weber's thought on immigration, capitalism, science and culture, Romanticism, race, diversity, Protestantism, and modernity. It traces Weber's impact on the development of the social sciences in the United States following his death in 1920, examining how Weber's ideas were interpreted, translated, and disseminated by American scholars such as Talcott Parsons and Frank Knight, and how the Weberian canon, codified in America, was reintroduced into Europe after World War II.

Do We Need a Postmodern Anthropology for Mission in a Postcolonial World?

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Rynkiewich
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
World War ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Abstract There was a time when mission studies benefitted from a symbiotic relationship with the social sciences. However, it appears that relationship has stagnated and now is waning. The argument is made here, in the case of cultural anthropology both in Europe and the United States, that a once mutually beneficial though sometimes strained relationship has suffered a parting of the ways in recent decades. First, the article reviews the relationships between missionaries and anthropologists before World War II when it was possible to be a ‘missionary anthropologist’ with a foot in both disciplines. In that period, the conversation went two ways with missionary anthropologists making important contributions to anthropology. Then, the article reviews some aspects of the development of the two disciplines after World War II when increasing professionalism in both disciplines and a postmodern turn in anthropology took the disciplines in different directions. Finally, the article asks whether or not the conversation, and thus the cross-fertilization, can be restarted, especially since the youngest generation of anthropologists has recognized the reality of local Christianities in their fields of study.

Witte, Ernest Frederic

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Longres
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social

Ernest Frederic Witte (1904–1986) was an educator and administrator. His work in the social welfare field, particularly during World War II, was influential both in the United States and internationally. He was among the first to deal with survivors of the Nazi death camps.

Reconnecting Household and Community

2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN H. SCANZONI
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Spatial Arrangement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Disadvantage ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
End Point

The aim of this article is to sketch the outlines of a social and spatial arrangement linking the household with its neighborhood. The fundamental theoretical and policy issue considered here is the sufficiency of the model of household isolation that has prevailed in the United States since the post-World War II era. Contrary to Talcott Parsons, who viewed that model as the end point of family evolution, critics at the time perceived it as having serious structural flaws. They argued for the reinvention of a meso layer of society linking the household more closely with its neighborhood. This article elaborates that theme by suggesting four spheres in which households might form pacts or alliances. These include gender, children/youth, mature persons, and economic disadvantage. To be fully implemented, the last issue in particular requires a partnership of some type with government.

“Striking Deaths” at their Roots: Assaying the Social Determinants of Extreme Labor-Management Violence in US Labor History—1877–1947

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 541-575
Author(s):  
Paul F. Lipold
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
World War ◽  
Labor Management ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
The Social

The seven decades framed by the Great Railway Strike of 1877 and institutionalization of organized labor in the wake of World War II constituted a unique period of US labor relations, one that labor historians have identified as the most violent and bloody of any Western industrialized nation. Despite long-standing scholarly interest in the issues of labor-management conflict, however, important questions regarding the causes of extreme labor-management violence within the United States have never been adequately addressed. In this paper, I utilize a recently compiled and unique data set of American strike fatalities to statistically model the causes of extreme strike violence in the United States. The time-series evidence suggests that picket-line violence increased in association with (1) the struggle for and against unionization and (2) economic desperation associated with tightening labor markets. The results also both depict the stultifying effect of massacres and suggest that state support for labor's right to organize tended to decrease the likelihood of violence and vice versa. This paper not only thus provides fresh insights into classic questions, but also offers a basis for both transhistorical and international comparison.

The 1930s Roots of the Postwar “Consensus”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy L. Wall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Shared Values ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
The Social ◽  
Widespread Agreement

This chapter argues that the postwar decades were characterized less by a fixedconsensus about American political values than by widespread agreement about the needfor such a consensus. It then suggests that the roots of this consensus culture can be found in the turbulent years that preceded U.S. entry into World War II. During this period, diverse American elites worried that fascism and communism constituted a threat to the United States not only abroad but also at home. They were also concerned about the effects of disunity on democratic political culture. As a consequence, these elites came to believe that Americans needed to emphasize their shared political values in order to avoid the social unrest that had ravaged other lands, but did not always agree on the nature of those shared values.

Norm-based leadership and the challenge of democratically elected authoritarians

Leadership ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 174271502096653
Author(s):  
Bert A Spector
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
New Normal ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
The Social ◽  
Future Leaders ◽  
Social Units

Across the post-World War II western liberal order, antidemocratic leaders have ascended to power through the ballot box and then engaged in an assault on prodemocratic norms. Commentators have worried that counter-normative behaviors will bring into existence a “new normal,” constructing an antidemocratic regimen in which future leaders will be freed to operate beyond either long-standing or newly created democratic expectations. In this article, I explore the matter of how and when incumbent leaders establish norms for future leaders. Normative leadership is typically presented as the capacity of leaders to set norms for the social units they are heading. Less examined but vital to the understanding of how leadership is enacted is the question of how prevailing norms create opportunities and limitations on the exercise of leadership. Leaders set norms not only just for their followers but also for future leaders. With particular attention to the norm breaking of Donald Trump in the United States, I examine a pattern of norm setting, norm breaking, and norm resetting that has unfolded at the presidential level. Whatever norms Trump, or any authoritarian leaders, may break during their incumbency, the setting of new norms will rely on a network of actors: not only just future leaders but also representatives of institutions (the courts, military, press, congress, etc.) as well as voters.

scholarly journals MCCARTHYISM AND THE MATHEMATIZATION OF ECONOMICS

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Roy Weintraub
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Operations Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
World War ◽  
Protective Coloration ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mccarthy Period

Historians of the social sciences and historians of economics have come to agree that, in the United States, the 1940s transformation of economics from political economy to economic science was associated with economists’ engagements with other disciplines—e.g., mathematics, statistics, operations research, physics, engineering, cybernetics—during and immediately after World War II. More controversially, some historians have also argued that the transformation was accelerated by economists’ desires to be safe, to seek the protective coloration of mathematics and statistics, during the McCarthy period. This paper argues that that particular claim 1) is generally accepted, but 2) is unsupported by good evidence, and 3) what evidence there is suggests that the claim is false.

Clausewitz: A Bibliographical Survey

1965 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Paret
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Partial Loss ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Bibliographical Survey

The vitality of the social sciences in the United States has not prevented some of its most influential pioneers from becoming unread classics. A widespread preference for textbook treatment and up-to-theminute analysis plays its part; but if the reader does want to turn to the originals, he often finds that they are not readily available. Complete and scholarly editions of writers who pursued new directions of inquiry are rarer than might be supposed—even in their native language. The situation is particularly bad when it comes to foreign authors. A writer's theories and insights may be transmitted through one or two major works, while the rest of his output is ignored, so that his thoughts are analyzed in isolation, without benefit of the preliminary sketches, correspondence, and marginal studies that would give depth and suppleness to the interpretation. Until recently Rousseau and Tocqueville have been in this position; another case in point is Max Weber, ignorance of whose fertile theorizing has misled more than one commentator. Still another, and extreme, example of intellectual discontinuity is provided by Clausewitz. Much of his work has never been published; even in German most of it is out of print; little of it has ever been translated. The result has been the partial loss of a remarkable historical and theoretical achievement. To the American reader, in particular, Clausewitz rarely means more than the “philosopher of war,” a famous name associated with one or two clichés backed up by little of substance. Repeated attempts to outline Clausewitz's thought, or to present the “essential Clausewitz” in the form of excerpts, have never been of more than doubtful value, if only because his methodology and dialectic are scarcely less interesting than the conclusions they reach. It would be pointless to attempt the impossible once again. On the other hand, a brief survey of Clausewitz's writings and of the literature concerning him may provide a useful introduction to his theories and to the manner in which for the past 150 years they have influenced the study and the waging of war.

Chinatown Offers Us a Lesson

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen D. Wu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Juvenile Delinquency ◽  
The United States ◽  
Youth Crime ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Important Means

This chapter examines how a a national panic over a perceived escalation in youth criminality surfaced in the early 1940s, which was triggered by the social transformations of wartime. For Chinese in the United States, the issue of juvenile delinquency became an important means through which to stipulate their race and citizenship imperatives after World War II. Chinatown leaders adopted a bifurcated strategy that reflected the ongoing tension between sameness and difference under racial liberalism. In one direction, community managers argued that juvenile delinquency was as much a problem for the Chinese as for other Americans. They stressed their right to state resources to stamp out youth crime as equal and deserving members of the polity.

The American Public’s Attention to Politics in Conflict and Crisis, 1880–1963

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-244
Author(s):  
Robert Urbatsch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Direct Measures

Parental naming practices in the United States have much to reveal about public attitudes, preoccupations, and reactions to current events. Evidence from the 2011 version of the Social Security Master Death File—a database that includes nearly all of the Americans who were alive between World War II and 2011—reveals that newborns are more likely to acquire the name of a president after elections, assassination attempts, and declarations of war. Regression analysis comparing presidential names to polling data suggests that these trends reflect shifts in public approval of the president, implying that naming can provide important information about historical eras when direct measures are unavailable.

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