Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Edward Shils as a sociologist

  • Articles
  • Published:
Minerva Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. The following chronological list is confined to works written, translated or edited by Edward Shils; it gives some indication of the range of his scholarship in the field of sociology. Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (cotranslator) (London: Routledge, 1936); Mannheim, Karl, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction: Studies in Modern Social Structure (translator) (London: Routledge, 1940); The Present State of American Sociology (Glencoe: Free Press, 1948); Weber, Max, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (editor, translator with H.A. Finch, introduction) (Glencoe: Free Press, 1949); (with T. Parsons) Toward a General Theory of Action: Theoretical Foundations for the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1951); (with T. Parsons and R. Bales), Working Papers in the Theory of Action (Glencoe: Free Press, 1953); Weber, Max, On Law in Economy and Society (translator, with Max Rheinstein) (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1954); The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of American Security Policy (Glencoe: Free Press/London: Heinemann, 1956); Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory (editor, with T. Parsons, K.D. Naegele and J.R. Pitts) (Glencoe: Free Press, 1961); The Intellectual between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation (The Hague: Mouton, 1962); Political Development in the New States (The Hague: Mouton, 1962); Criteria for Scientific Development: Public Policy and National Goals (editor) (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968); The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays (Selected Papers, Vol. I) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972); Max Weber on Universities: The Power of the State and the Dignity of the Academic Calling in Imperial Germany (editor and translator) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Selected Papers, Vol. II) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); The Calling of Sociology and Other Essays on the Pursuit of Learning (Selected Papers, Vol. III) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); The Constitution of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Universities, Politicians and Bureaucrats: Europe and the United States (editor, with Hans Daalder) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); The Academic Ethic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Remembering the University of Chicago: Teachers, Scientists, Scholars (editor) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Cambridge Women: Twelve Portraits (editor, with Carmen Blacker) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  2. See Epstein, Joseph, “My Friend Edward”, The American Scholar, LXIV (Summer 1995), p. 374; reprinted in this issue, pp. 103–123.

  3. Annan, N., Our Age (London: Fontana, 1991), pp. 146–147.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Benney, M., Almost a Gentleman (London: Peter Davies, 1966), pp. 218–219.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Gould, J., “Edward Shils' Achievement: The Owl of Minerva”, Encounter, LVI (May 1981), p. 69.

  6. “[I]t is fitting that I should close this introduction by acknowledging my indebtedness to many powerful, wondrously studious intelligences, some of whom I have known personally, other from the distance crossed by their written works... Of those I have not known, their number is countless, but Max Weber should be mentioned far more than any other. After him, of writers who lived in the twentieth century, I mention Werner Sombart, Roberto Michels, Henry de Man, M I Rostovzeff, Anders Nygren, Martin Nilsson, Rudolf Otto, Maurice Halbwachs. I shall not go back before the beginning of the present century.” Introduction to The Constitution of Society, op. cit., pp. xxix–xxx. Note the omission of Mannheim of whom he was severely critical. Shils, E., “Ideology and Utopia”, Daedalus, CIII (Winter 1973), pp. 83–89.

  7. Shils, E. and Young, M., “The Meaning of the Coronation”, Sociological Review, I (December 1953), pp. 63–81.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Epstein, J., “My Friend Edward”, op. cit., p. 385; and below, p. 116.

  9. Ibid., p. 393; and below, p. 123.

  10. “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II”, Public Opinion Quarterly, XII (Summer 1948), pp. 280–315.

  11. “Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties”, British Journal of Sociology, VIII (1957), pp. 130–145.

  12. See, e.g., Shils, E., “Privacy: Its Constitution and Vicissitudes”, Law and Contemporary Problems, XXXI (Spring 1966), pp. 281–306.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Epstein, J., “My Friend Edward”, op. cit., p. 380; and below, p. 111.

  14. Shils, E., “The Calling of Sociology”, in Parsons, T., Shils, E., Naegele, K.D. and Pitts, J.R. (eds), Theories of Society, op. cit., p. 1441.

  15. Daedalus, XCIX (Fall 1970), pp. 760–825. The almost complete absence of footnotes referring to sources was characteristic of his writing from at least mid-career onwards. It derived not only from his preference for the essay style, but from his astounding breadth of reading. In his foreword to Ludwik Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), Thomas Kuhn refers to having known about Fleck's (untranslated) book before anyone knew of it, apart from Edward Shils “who has apparently read everything” (p. vii). Not only did Shils read and remember, but he could, as Joseph Epstein makes clear, recall it at a moment's notice with devastating effect. In that sense, at least, there was no need for footnotes.

  16. Willmott, Peter, “The Institute of Community Studies”, in Bulmer, M. (ed.), Essays on the History of British Sociological Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 146–147.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Obituary of Edward Shils, The Guardian, 8 February, 1995, additional note by Michael Young.

  18. “Edward Shils: Theories from Right and Left”, obituary in The Guardian, 8 February, 1995.

  19. Shils, E., “Primary Groups in the American Army”, in Merton, R.K. and Lazarsfeld, P. (eds), Studies in the Scope and Method of the American Soldier: Continuities in Social Research (Glencoe: Free Press, 1950), pp. 19–39.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Merton, R.K., “The Bearing of Sociological Theory on Empirical Research”, in his Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: Free Press, 1957), pp. 85–101.

    Google Scholar 

  21. “Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties”, op. cit., pp. 144–145.

  22. “Professor Mills on the Calling of Sociology”, World Politics, XIII (1961), p. 607.

  23. “Robert E Park, 1864–1944” in Shils, E. (ed.), Remembering the University of Chicago, op. cit., p. 384.

  24. Epstein, J., “My Friend Edward”, op. cit., pp. 377–378; and below, p. 109.

  25. Duneier, Mitchell, Slim's Table: Race, Respectability and Masculinity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). There some discussion of Shils' earlier relationship to the department of sociology, in which he held teaching positions from 1945 to 1947 and from 1957 onwards, in Abbott, A. and Gaziano, E., “Transition and Tradition: Departmental Faculty in the Era of the Second Chicago School”, in Fine, G.A. (ed.), A Second Chicago School? The Development of a Postwar American Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 221–272.

    Google Scholar 

  26. “Center and Periphery: An Idea and its Career, 1935–1987”, in Greenfeld, L. and Martin, M. (eds), Center: Ideas and Institutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 279.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Introduction in Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology, op cit., pp. vii-xliii.

  28. Ben-David, J. and Clark, T.N., Culture and its Creators: Essays in Honour of Edward Shils (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  29. Greenfeld, L. and Martin, M. (eds), Center, op. cit.

  30. For a recent somewhat polemical characterisation of this situation in the United States, see Horowitz, I.L., The Decomposition of Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). For a different diagnosis of the problems of British sociology, including the reasons for its lack of acceptance at and failure to become successfully established in the ancient universities, and its “outsider” stance and status, see Shils, E., “On the Eve: A Prospect in Retrospect”, in Bulmer, M. (ed.), Essays on the History of British Sociological Research, op. cit., pp. 165–178.

    Google Scholar 

  31. See also Halsey, A.H., “Proletarians and Professionals: The Postwar British Sociologists”, in Bulmer, M. (ed.), Essays on the History of British Sociological Research, op. cit., pp. 151–164, originally published in the Archives Européens de Sociologie, 1982.

  32. Halsey, A.H., “Edward Shils”, (obituary), op. cit.

  33. “Edward Shils: Social Theorist and Critic”, obituary in The Times of India, 21 February, 1995.

Download references

Authors
  1. Martin Bulmer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bulmer, M. Edward Shils as a sociologist. Minerva 34, 7–21 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00124197

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00124197

Search

Navigation