biography
| name: |
Sumner, William Graham
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1840–1910)
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| biography:
| Sociologist and educator, born in Paterson, New Jersey, USA. The son of an immigrant English workman who read and thought about social and economic issues, he studied at Yale (1863 BA) and then went to Europe to study for the ministry. In 1869 he was ordained as a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church and became a rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Morristown, NJ (1870). Desiring to speak out on social and economic issues of the day, he accepted a professorship in political and social science at Yale (1872), a post he held until his death. He was one of the most influential teachers of his era, famed for his independent thought, innovative classes, and rigorous standards. Usually labelled a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, he was a man of strong moral convictions and opposed all forms of shoddy thinking. He saw all aspects of society as interrelated, and, as he worked on what was to be his major book, he became sidetracked on a supporting study of the underlying customs of societies through the ages, and published this as Folkways (1907). Thus his major work, Science of Society, came out in four volumes posthumously (1927), heavily edited by Yale professor Albert G Keller. A man of immense energies, in addition to his teaching he participated in community activities, working in particular to improve Connecticut's public education. In his day he was also widely known for his lively essays and public lectures, perhaps the most notable being ‘The Forgotten Man’, what a later generation would call ‘the silent majority’ of average people who ‘are never mentioned in the newspapers, but just work and save and pay’. |
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