Joseph R. Gusfield

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Joseph R. Gusfield (born September 6, 1923 in Chicago - † January 5, 2015 ) was an American sociologist and addiction researcher.

Life

Joseph Gusfield grew up as a Jew from a small family in the ethnically and socially tense Chicago during the time of the Great Depression , this and the reports about the persecution of the Jews in the 1930s in (distant) Germany made him a Zionist and leftist.

Gusfield studied sociology at the University of Chicago from 1941 and worked on the side for living expenses and tuition fees. Between 1943 and 1946 he took part in World War II as a soldier , which “disaffected” him with scientific certainties. In 1946 he finished his sociology studies, began to study law and was integrated into the sociological teaching as a teaching assistant. He made his master's thesis in 1950 with an empirical study of self-concepts. He then taught as the only sociologist until 1955 at the Hobart and William Smith in Geneva (New York) . In 1954 he completed his Ph.D. with Herbert Blumer and was until 1969 sociology professor at the University of Illinois . Since 1969 he has been professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego and retired in 2007.

The best-known work of the cultural sociologist , who has his research focus in the area of social movements , is the study of the American abstinence movement Symbolic crusade. Status politics and the American temperance movement (1963). After working on topics in Indian society, where he had several months of research, on Japan, with David Riesman on educational research, the alcohol topic caught up with him again and he worked on alcohol consumption and road traffic: The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking, Driving, and the Symbolic order .

Gusfield was married to the social worker Irma Geller.

Fonts (selection)

  • Social Structure and Moral Reform: A Study of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union . In: The American Journal of Sociology , 61, No. 3 (1955)
  • Moral passage. The Symbolic Process in the Public Designations of Deviance . In: Social Problems , 15, 1967/1968, pp. 175-189.
    • Moral passage. The symbolic process of publicly marking deviance . In: Daniela Klimke, Aldo Legnaro (eds.), Criminological basic texts . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-06503-4 , pp. 68-87, translated by Aldo Legnaro.
  • Community: A Critical Response . Harper & Row, New York 1975, ISBN 0-06-136176-3 .
  • Alcohol Problems: An Interactionist View . In: Jean-Pierre von Wartburg, Pierre Magnenat, Richard Muller, Sonja Wyss (eds.): Currents in Alcohol Research and the Prevention of Alcohol Problems - Proceedings of an International Symposium Held in Lausanne, Switzerland, November 7-9, 1983 . Hans Huber, Bern 1985, pp. 71-81
  • Symbolic crusade. Status politics and the American temperance movement . 2nd edition, University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1986, ISBN 0-252-01321-2 .
  • Contested Meanings: The Construction of Alcohol Problems . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1996, ISBN 0-299-14930-7 .
  • The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking, Driving, and the Symbolic Order . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1981, ISBN 0-226-31093-0 .
  • My Life and Soft Times . In: Bennett M. Berger (Ed.): Authors of their own lives: intellectual autobiographies by twenty American sociologists . Univ. of California Pr., Berkeley 1990, pp. 104-129.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary. In: The San Diego Union Tribune , March 22, 2015; accessed on November 22, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c Joseph Gusfield: My Life and Soft Times , 1990, pp. 104-129
  3. ↑ Irma (Geller) Gusfield ( Memento of the original dated November 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , at University of Chicago @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / mag.uchicago.edu
personal data
SURNAME Gusfield, Joseph R.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago
DATE OF DEATH 5th January 2015