Staff and Teaching in Sociology at LSE, 1950–: The Short Half-Century

Abstract

In 1950 the University of London was still the only university in the country accredited to award degrees in sociology, but the mid-century is a good point, after LSE had taught sociology for almost fifty years, to assess the Department’s position and to ask whether and, if so to what degree, what followed built in any way on what had gone before. The mid-century break to consider these issues has of course a degree of arbitrariness, but it is useful heuristically, for the 1940s saw the end of the period when Sociology was dominated by its pre-war personalities. The post-war years brought more students and, more relevant perhaps, a significant expansion in staff numbers as the discipline began to gain a wider academic foothold. However, this period also saw the subject move in theoretical directions that the pre-war regime would not always have recognized. New issues demanded new perspectives and some of those who delivered these are listed in Table W4.1, which lists all major appointments to the Department from 1950 to 2015.

‘And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances.’

William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7, lines 139–40

Biographical and bibliographic details for those significant appointments up and including 1981 are given, concentrating especially on their products whilst at LSE. After the cutbacks on university funding introduced in 1981 by the Conservative Government, there were no further full-time Sociology appointments until 1988. This seven-year gap is a convenient caesura between the period when it is reasonable to give some substantive biographical details about pre-1982 appointees (since all of them are formally retired, though in some cases happily still alive) and the post-1987 appointees, many of whom are still in formal academic employment, even if not at LSE, and whose contributions and careers perhaps ought not to be prematurely assessed. The descriptive details of all those from the pre-1982 period who are still alive have, in the interest of discretion and decorum, been deliberately limited to their basic career details, except for one or two cases where the discussion is more extensive or evaluative but where the text concerned has been cleared with the particular person. I have sought to confine bibliographical details about individuals to their most defining publications and to note their contributions most important to the history of LSE Sociology, seeking to avoid merely a tedious recitation of their curricula vitae; however, given the productivity of some LSE sociologists over a range of subject areas, this procedure has necessarily led to a large list of references for this chapter.

The LSE Archives contain numerous files on staffing and related departmental matters, but eleven of these, covering variously between them the years 1947 to 1993, are closed for reasons of confidentiality.