Social Theory

Social Theory offers an extensive selection of documents that explore the complexities and interpret the nature of social behavior and organization. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. The current release features more than 122,000 pages of content by such major theorists as Theodor Adorno, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Howard Becker, Émile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, Robert Merton, Dorothy Smith, and Talcott Parsons.

Lewis Coser (27 November 1913–8 July 2003) was an American sociologist.

Born in Berlin (Ludwig Cohen), Coser was the first sociologist to try to bring together structural functionalism and conflict theory; his work was focused on finding the functions of social conflict. Coser argued - with Georg Simmel - that conflict might serve to solidify a loosely structured group. In a society that seems to be disintegrating, conflict with another society, inter-group conflict, may restore the integrative core. For example, the cohesiveness of Israeli Jews might be attributed to the long-standing conflict with the Arabs. Conflict with one group may also serve to produce cohesion by leading to a series of alliances with other groups.

Conflicts within a society, intra-group conflict, can bring some ordinarily isolated individuals into an active role. The protest over the Vietnam War motivated many young people to take vigorous roles in American political life for the first time.

Conflicts also serve a communication function. Prior to conflict, groups may be unsure of their adversary’s position, but as a result of conflict, positions and boundaries between groups often become clarified, leaving individuals better able to decide on a proper course of action in relation to their adversary.

Much like status consistency, conflicts along the same cleavages intensify the severity of the conflict. Cross-cutting cleavages tend to dissipate the severity of the conflict. For example, the coincidence of economic and political disenfranchisement among Palestinians in the West Bank intensify their conflict with Israeli Jews. In contrast, the non-coincidence of economic and political disenfranchisement among Quebecers reduces somewhat the severity of their conflict with English Canada, especially with the rising prosperity of the French Canadian new middle class operating in the public sector and corporate world.

Coser first taught at the University of Chicago and the University of California. He then founded the sociology department at Brandeis University and taught there for 15 years before joining the sociology department of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. [1]

In addition to writing many articles and book chapters, Coser wrote or edited two dozen books, including

The Functions of Social Conflict, 1956
The American Communist Party (with Irving Howe),1957.
Sociological Theory, 1964
Men of ideas, 1965
Political Sociology, 1967
Continuities in the Study of Social Conflict, 1967
A Handful of Thistles: Collected Papers in Moral Conviction, 1968.
Sociological Theory (with Bernard Rosenberg), 1969.
Masters of Sociological Thought, 1970
Thew Seventies: Problems and Proposals (with Irving Howe), 1972.
Greedy Institutions, 1974
The Idea of Social Structure, Papers in Honor of R. K. Merton, 1975
The Uses of Controversy in Sociology, 1976
Refugee Scholars in America, 1984
Conflict and Consensus, 1984
Voices of Dissent (with Maurice Halbwachs), 1992.
The New Conservatives: A Critique from the Left (with Irving Howe), 1999
In 1954, with Irving Howe, Coser established the radical journal, Dissent. Upon his death in 2003, the author of his obituary in that magazine suggested that Coser "always felt himself a marginal man. He was Jewish and non-Jewish; an American and a European; a hardheaded social analyst, committed to rigorous honesty in judgment and deed, and a passionate advocate; a leftist and a critic of the left; a defender of the underdog and something of an elete intellectual mandarin."