Herbert J. Goose

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Herbert Julius Gans (born May 7, 1927 in Cologne ) is an American sociologist . He was the 79th president of the American Sociological Association .

Career

Gans had emigrated with his family from Nazi Germany to the United States in 1940. He studied sociology at the University of Chicago (among others with David Riesman ), and at the University of Pennsylvania . He taught from 1971 to 2007 as a professor at Columbia University (New York) and was therefore academically active for a very long time as an emeritus .

plant

With his research results on the “error of architectural determinism” Gans had a considerable influence on urban planning . In the context of participatory observation , Gans determined at the beginning of the 1960s that the large-scale urban renewals (destruction of so-called slums ) would fail to achieve their socio-political goal. The structural and physical environment “slum” was viewed as the cause of social problems. Gans, on the other hand, demonstrated that there were social relationships and institutions in slums and that there could be no question of social neglect. In fact, the social ties are characterized by a family-centered way of life and binding neighborly contacts. Gans found the term for this lifestyle "urban villager" ( "urban villagers") . Its way of life differed significantly from the urban planners' individualized, anonymous and middle-class-oriented city planners.

According to Hartmut Häußermann , Gans' investigations

an example of sociological research that exposed the unscientific problem discussion of an entire profession (here the urban planner) as unrealistic prejudices and made demands for changes in urban planning practice - which were actually followed with some delay.

In addition, Gans researched and published on questions of the cultural difference between social classes , on the symbolic identity formation of ethnic-religious groups , on media sociology and on the sociology of sociology .

In 1982 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1988 he was president of the American Sociological Association .

Fonts (selection)

  • The Urban Villagers. Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans first 1962, expanded new edition: Free Press 1982, ISBN 0029112400
  • The Levittowners (1967)
  • People and Plans (1968)
  • More Equality (1973)
  • Popular Culture and High Culture. An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste first 1974, expanded and updated new edition: Basic Books 1999, ISBN 0465026095
  • Deciding What's News: A study of CBS evening news, NBC nightly news, Newsweek, and Time (1979)
  • Middle American Individualism (1988)
  • Relativism, Equality, and Popular Culture. In: Bennett M. Berger (Ed.): Authors of their own lives: intellectual autobiographies by twenty American sociologists , Berkeley: Univ. of California Pr., 1990, pp. 432-451
  • People, Plans, and Policies (1991)
  • The War Against The Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy , Basic Books 1996, ISBN 0465019919
  • Making Sense of America (1999)
  • Democracy and the News (2003)
  • Imagining America in 2033 (2008)
  • Gans, Herbert J .: Working in Six Research Areas: A Multi-Field Sociological Career . In: Annual Review of Sociology . 35, 2009, p. 1. doi : 10.1146 / annurev-soc-070308-115936 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In doing so, he updated the term rus in urbe (“rural life in the city”) from William Bascom from 1955 ( Urbanization among the Yoruba ) for industrialized societies , as it was very fruitful as a concept for the urban sociology of the “ developing countries ”.
  2. ↑ Hartmut Häussermann: Herbert J. Gans. In: Dirk Kaesler, Ludgera Vogt (ed.): Major works of sociology . Kröner, Stuttgart 2000, p. 136.
  3. ^ Herbert J. Gans: Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in America. In: Ethnic and Racial Studies , Vol. 2, No. 1 (1979), pp. 1-19.
  4. ^ Herbert J. Gans: Symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity: Towards a comparison of ethnic and religious acculturation. In: Ethnic and Racial Studies , Vol. 17, No. 4 (1994), pp. 577-592.
personal data
SURNAME Goose, Herbert J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goose, Herbert Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne