Robert Staughton Lynd

Robert Staughton Lynd ( born September 26, 1892 in New Albany, Indiana, † November 1, 1970 in New York City ) was an American sociologist and professor at Columbia University, New York.

Life

Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd his wife were known by their community sociological studies Middletown ( 1929) and Middletown in Transition ( 1937).

Lynd had received no formal training as a sociologist, but studied theology at Union Theological Seminary. He worked as a chaplain at an oil field of the Rockefeller Group and received by an article about the living conditions there the research commissioned by the Rockefeller Institute of Social and Religious Research for its community- sociological studies. On the basis of these studies it was then his doctorate at Columbia University in Sociology.

Reception

In Knowledge for what? (1939 ) analyzed the relationship between the Lynd contemporary situation of American culture and the situation of the social sciences. He directs his socially critical attention to the tensions and divisions of American society and is committed to a social science that should the compartment boundaries work border to socially relevant problems. The book, characterized by the contemporary experience of the Great Depression, the New Deal and the threat of resurgent fascism, can in many ways as an anticipation of the now well-known book The Sociological Imagination: conceived by Charles Wright Mills (German criticism of the sociological imagination ) be.

Works (selection)

  • Helen M. Lynd: Middletown. A Study in Contemporary American Culture (A Harvest Book; 27). Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1965 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1929).
  • Helen M. Lynd: Middletown in Transition. A Study in Cultural Conflicts. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, New York 1982, ISBN 0-15-659551-6 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1937).
  • Knowledge for what? The Place of Social Science in American Culture. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Conn. 1986, ISBN 0-8195-6170-3.

Single Documents

  • Sociologist ( 20th century)
  • Americans
  • Born in 1892
  • Died in 1970
  • Man
Lewis A. Coser Integrated Authority File
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