Biographical Memoirs Volume 87 (2005) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Gabriel A. Almond
Gabriel A. Almond
Pages 30-49
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 30... ...
Almond E David by Photo
|
From page 31... ...
Almond was born in 1911 in Rock Island, Illinois, and was raised in Chicago, the son of a rabbi. Though he lived a secular life, his religious background can be seen in many ways, from his frequent references to biblical events and biblical themes to the deep moral commitments that infused his work.
|
From page 32... ...
Almond's intellectually rewarding career began in 1928 with his entry as an undergraduate to the University of Chicago, where he encountered a faculty that was working at the discipline's research frontiers as well as a cohort of bright fellow graduate students who became innovators in different fields of specialization and leaders in the profession. In his senior year Almond took Lasswell's course on "Non-Rational Factors in Political Behavior" and, clearly under Lasswell's guidance to judge from its voluble title, wrote a senior thesis on "Developmental and Equilibrium Analysis of Balancing Power Processes." He also collaborated with Lasswell in a joint study of people on public relief.
|
From page 33... ...
. The reason for this enervating postponement was that when in 1944 Almond included a number of chapters on the psychological aspects of wealth, Professor Merriam refused to recommend its publication, concerned about offending some of the major
|
From page 34... ...
That the Chicagoans would be in the forefront of the social scientists arriving in Washington should not come as a surprise, and the nation's capital became something of a replica writ large of the interdisciplinary movement that had been nursed at the University of Chicago. Once again, Harold Lasswell was for many, whether from Chicago or elsewhere, a kind of advance man who facilitated their migration into the new agencies.
|
From page 35... ...
The major purpose was to study, by way of survey research, the effect of strategic bombing on the population's attitudes and behavior. The Almond team's special assignment was to retrieve documents dealing with the air war and interrogating police and Gestapo officials but also survivors of the German resistance.
|
From page 36... ...
By mood Almond meant a rather pliable and formless reaction to an ambiguous context that was particularly pronounced in foreign affairs. He argued, however, that the pervasive and destructive nature of mood swings, especially among the lower social strata, which feel powerless, is offset by attentive publics among elites.
|
From page 37... ...
Based on a wide range of data -- opinion polls conducted in this country and abroad, depth interviews with former communists, and content analysis of relevant documents -- the study employed whatever methodologies and relevant theories were available at the time, securing for Almond the recognition of having been one of the first practitioners of political psychology, long before it had become a field of study in its own right. Almond remained at Princeton until 1959, when he moved back to Yale, and from there, four years later, to Stanford, where as chair from 1964 to 1969 he effectively rejuvenated an old-fashioned Department of Political Science.
|
From page 38... ...
Gabriel quickly organized the new Committee on Comparative Politics with a double mandate: first, to mobilize all the powers of the modern social sciences-including, in particular, the insights and findings of sociology, anthropology, and psychology -- for the comparative study of political systems; and second, to expand the range of comparative analysis to include the non-Western world, in particular, the new states just emerging from colonial rule. A majority of the members of the initial Committee on Comparative Politics were specialists on the newly independent states and such non-Western countries as Japan, Turkey, and Iran.
|
From page 39... ...
Building on the earlier social theorists who analyzed social change during the initial industrial revolution in Europe and on Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils's new work, Toward a Theory of Action, Gabriel crafted a heuristic theory for analyzing total political systems. He posited that all political systems consisted of a set of specific functions that could be performed by the same or different structures in different settings.
|
From page 40... ...
Gabriel had the extraordinary ability to recognize how people with different skills and area specializations, working with different concepts and theories, could still be brought together to produce a more general contribution to knowledge. He significantly advanced comparative studies through his ability to devise multiple models and to conceptualize typologies that would highlight significant factors for explaining differences among systems.
|
From page 41... ...
THE YEARS OF RETIREMENT Crisis, Choice, and Change was completed at about the time of Almond's retirement from Stanford in 1976. In the oral history interview with Richard Brody at about that time, he described this comprehensive view of comparative politics as representing a "sense of closure as far as my own career is concerned." But his career was far from closed.
|
From page 42... ...
, Almond deplored the divisions in political science. What he believed to have been a more unified, though pluralistic, discipline was now -- to use the phrase that became standard in the field to describe the unease he and others felt -- seated at "separate tables," unable and unwilling to collaborate.
|
From page 43... ...
He was a student of the Old Testament and often cited its lessons in a modern context. His last paper, finished just before his death, was on "Foreign Policy and the Theology of Ancient Israel." Almond's early work with the Committee on Comparative Politics had been within the framework of modernization theory and its focus on the secularization of the world, but he had never abandoned his belief in the importance of religion.
|
From page 44... ...
He is neither a fox that knows many things nor a hedgehog that knows one big thing; rather he is a person who knows many big things. Almond was a producer of large-scale typologies and approaches who never abandoned close empirical work; a generalizer who accepted the variety of particular nations and cultures; an early user of quantitative approaches who never abandoned history.
|
From page 45... ...
A L M O N D 45 NOTE 1. American Political Science Association, Oral History Project.
|
From page 46... ...
The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
|
From page 47... ...
Comparative Politics: A Theoretical Approach. New York: Harper Collins 1998 Plutocracy and Politics in New York City.
|
From page 48... ...
48 B I O G R A P H I C A L M E M O I R S 2002 Ventures in Political Science: Narratives and Reflections. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.