Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Hagerstown and Schizophrenia
- 2 Social Stratification and Parent–Child Relations in Washington, DC
- 3 The Torino Study
- 4 Men Employed in Civilian Occupations in the United States
- 5 The Transformation of the Occupations Study into a Longitudinal Analysis
- 6 Life on Sabbatical Leave in Norway and at the National Institute of Mental Health
- 7 Class, Stratification, and Personality
- 8 Poland under Communism
- 9 Occupational Self-Direction and Distress in Poland
- 10 The Vietnam War, Nixon, and Me
- 11 Japan
- 12 Germany – West and East
- 13 Poland and Ukraine in Transition to Capitalism and Democracy
- 14 The Presidency of the American Sociological Association, Ronald Reagan, and My Job Switch
- 15 My Two Exploratory Expeditions to China
- 16 China in Transition to a Modern Economy
- 17 Retirement, and My Last Sabbatical, at Deep Springs Junior College
- 18 The Theory I Propose
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Hagerstown and Schizophrenia
- 2 Social Stratification and Parent–Child Relations in Washington, DC
- 3 The Torino Study
- 4 Men Employed in Civilian Occupations in the United States
- 5 The Transformation of the Occupations Study into a Longitudinal Analysis
- 6 Life on Sabbatical Leave in Norway and at the National Institute of Mental Health
- 7 Class, Stratification, and Personality
- 8 Poland under Communism
- 9 Occupational Self-Direction and Distress in Poland
- 10 The Vietnam War, Nixon, and Me
- 11 Japan
- 12 Germany – West and East
- 13 Poland and Ukraine in Transition to Capitalism and Democracy
- 14 The Presidency of the American Sociological Association, Ronald Reagan, and My Job Switch
- 15 My Two Exploratory Expeditions to China
- 16 China in Transition to a Modern Economy
- 17 Retirement, and My Last Sabbatical, at Deep Springs Junior College
- 18 The Theory I Propose
- Index
Summary
In the course of a very long career as a sociologist, I have written or coauthored, with my collaborators, nine books in English and a multitude of articles about our research. I had thought when I published the last of these books, Adventures in Sociology: My Life as a Cross-National Scholar, a few months ago, that I could now at long last retire and catch up on reading new books and rereading old ones. But that was not to happen quite yet. As I thought about my professional life, it seemed to me that it had been given largely to the development of a theory about the relationship of social structure and personality. I thought I had done a reasonable job of presenting this theory in the memoir, but I concluded that I still had more to do to reach my goal of presenting a fully developed theory.
Adventures in Sociology had been different from all its predecessors in that it was a true memoir, the autobiography of a social scientist. I had tried to present my life and my work together, showing how my personal relationships and the institutions in which I worked influenced my work. I had also discussed at length my conflicts with my two prominent enemies, Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. I was very proud of presenting my life and my work in the same book.
I had also made an early decision that Adventures in Sociology would be a book written not only for my colleagues in sociology but also for a lay audience. I made a small but highly significant change of tense in my writing. In the original publications, I had used the present tense, i.e. American respondents (obviously, at the time of some particular study) value this or that characteristic for their children, while Italian parents (obviously, at the time of that study) value this or some other characteristic. In my memoir, all of this was changed into parents in some country at some time valued some characteristic, at other times valued this or some other characteristic. I did not assume that people's values never change.
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- Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2019