Suchergebnisse

EDWARD SHILS WAS A PROLIFIC, FORMIDABLE AND unconventional sociologist. Sustained by his immense learning and extraordinary memory, and following the traditions of Max Weber and of the Chicago School, he brought other disciplines (notably European social and political thought) to bear upon his sociology. Over his long and productive lifetime he held positions in the most distinguished of universities: in England these included the LSE, Manchester and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He regularly spent about half of every year in Cambridge. Above all he was a loyal and long-serving teacher at the University of Chicago where he was distinguished service professor and had been among those who established the Committee of Social Thought. His scholarship was recognized in the USA by the invitation of the US National Council on the Humanities to give the prestigious Jefferson Lecture in 1979 and in Europe by the award of the Balzan Prize for service to general sociology in 1983. Government and Opposition has itself lost a most valued contributor and member of its Advisory Board.

By Any Standards Sammy Finer's Career Was one of the utmost distinction. It was also an outstanding (and outstandingly merited) case of social mobility. He was but seven years-old when he first declared his ambition to be a university teacher, inspired by the example of his brother Herman at the LSE. He was indeed to make his way in a world that was entirely novel and, despite Herman's example, was bound to be in some respects am alien one. Seldom can a childhood ambition have been so fully attained – least of all in a milieu like that of Oxford, whose pathways are only slowly and reluctantly revealed to the newcomer.