Word: lipset
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET, professor of Government and Social Relations, is luckier than most people who work for a living. He evidently likes his job and is convinced of its worth. In his essay on the history of political controversy at Harvard, Lipset writes about his profession and his place of employment like a parishioner who believes he worships the best of all gods at the best of all churches. His job, lest there be any confusion about it, is "creative scholarship," the cultivation and formulation of knowledge. His employer is, of course, Harvard University, whose historical dedication to free...
...beginning of his study of Harvard politics, Lipset warns his readers that the topics he emphasizes "clearly reflect the values, biases, and conceptual outlook of the authors." Cautions of this sort usually go without saying in academic literature, but in Lipset's case the warning should not go uneeded. Lipset is writing as an insider, a partisan on his home turf, and makes little pretense at detachment. He makes no apologies for his professional or institutional attachments, but Lipset's esteem for his calling has made his narrative account of Harvard politics more personal than it pretends...
Actually, it is highly likely that one's political orientation is possibly the first thing to change in the upwardly mobile. Indeed, if the "anticipatory socialization" that Seymour Lipset and Reinhard Bendix speak of in their book "Social Mobility in Industrial Society" is at work, the political and social orientations of the upwardly mobile begins to change even before they enter the higher strata--which is one of the reasons they do enter the higher strata. Except for the most unusual of an already unusual group, the upwardly mobile are eager to abandon their lower class orientations and, through...
...only does Jencks present us with nothing except his word that the lower strata would be more likely to produce these leaders than any other strata--especially the higher strata--but his argument seems to fly in the face of the findings quoted by Lipset and Bendix: "The effect of material limitations acts in part so as to narrow the perspective... The socially underprivileged adolescent has seen less, read less, heard about less, has experienced less variety in his environment in general, and is also simply aware of fewer opportunities than the socially privileged young person...
...because of sociology's lack of all-encompassing theory tied to the existing social order, sociologists have a tendency towards the accommodation of radical views. Senior sociologists at Harvard, like Seymour Martin Lipset and Daniel Bell, have integrated Marxist modes of analysis into their own theories. A parallel development would be impossible for any neo-classical economist. For this reason, and also because the senior Sociology faculty is somewhat to the left of Economics, an Economics-type purge of radicals seems unlikely. Taylor said last week, "In the Sociology Department, there are various sorts of Marxist sympathizers and very leftish...