Lewis A. Coser

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Lewis A. Coser
Born(1913-11-27)November 27, 1913
DiedJuly 8, 2003(2003-07-08) (aged 89)[2]
Academic background
EducationColumbia University
ThesisToward a Sociology of Social Conflict (1954)
Doctoral advisorRobert K. Merton[1]
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago
University of California
Brandeis University
Stony Brook University
Doctoral studentsAldon Morris, Walter W. Powell

Lewis Alfred Coser (27 November 1913 in

sociologist, serving as the 66th president of the American Sociological Association
in 1975.

Biography

Born in

State University of New York at Stony Brook.[2] Coser frequently worked with the eminent sociologist and his spouse, Rose Laub Coser
.

Sociology

Coser was the first sociologist to try to bring together

Arabs
. Conflict with one group may also serve to produce cohesion by leading to a series of alliances with other groups.

Conflicts within a society, intra-group conflict, can bring some ordinarily isolated individuals into an active role. The protest over the Vietnam War motivated many young people to take vigorous roles in American political life for the first time.

Conflicts also serve a communication function. Prior to conflict, groups may be unsure of their adversary’s position, but as a result of conflict, positions and boundaries between groups often become clarified, leaving individuals better able to decide on a proper course of action in relation to their adversary.

Much like status consistency, conflicts along the same cleavages intensify the severity of the conflict.

French Canadian
new middle class operating in the public sector and corporate world.

Politics

Coser was active within the

New York intellectuals. A eulogy at Carlo Tresca's memorial service in 1943 was delivered by Angelica Balabanoff, the socialist activist and former Bolshevik. According to Coser's account of the funeral, "I was sitting near a burly Irish policeman who clearly didn't understand a word of Balabanoff's fierce Italian oratory. But at her climax he burst into tears."[4]

In 1954, with Irving Howe, Coser established the radical journal, Dissent. Upon his death in 2003, the author of his obituary in that magazine suggested that Coser "always felt himself a marginal man. He was Jewish and non-Jewish; an American and a European; a hardheaded social analyst, committed to rigorous honesty in judgment and deed, and a passionate advocate; a leftist and a critic of the left; a defender of the underdog and something of an elite intellectual mandarin."

His The new conservatives: A critique from the left (with Irving Howe, 1974) was one of the first major works to define and analyse neoconservatism.

Works

  • The Functions of Social Conflict, 1956
  • The American Communist Party (with Irving Howe), 1957
  • Sociology Through Literature: An Introductory Reader, 1963
  • Sociological Theory, 1964
  • Men of ideas, 1965
  • Political Sociology, 1967
  • Continuities in the Study of Social Conflict, 1967
  • A Handful of Thistles: Collected Papers in Moral Conviction, 1968
  • Sociological Theory (with Bernard Rosenberg), 1969
  • Masters of Sociological Thought, 1970
  • The Seventies: Problems and Proposals (with Irving Howe), 1972
  • Greedy Institutions, 1974
  • The New Conservatives: A Critique from the Left (with Irving Howe), 1974
  • The Idea of Social Structure, Papers in Honor of R. K. Merton, 1975
  • The Uses of Controversy in Sociology, 1976
  • Refugee Scholars in America, 1984
  • Conflict and Consensus, 1984
  • Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing (with Charles Kadushin and Walter W. Powell), 1985
  • Voices of Dissent (with Maurice Halbwachs), 1992

References

  1. ProQuest 302005883
    .
  2. ^
    New York, NY
    . Retrieved August 30, 2019.
  3. ^ "Lewis Coser - Obituary". Dissent magazine.
  4. ^ Lewis Coser, "From a Heroic Past", Dissent, Summer 1989.

External links

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