Belief, Magic, and Anomie: Essays in Psychosocial Anthropology.

Mayer, Doris; Parsons, Anne

doi:10.2307/2799682

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…When Laub Coser characterizes the two groups, Southern Italian and Eastern European immigrant families, as "centripedal" versus "centrifugal" family structures, she makes use of a distinction of Anne Parsons (Parsons, 1969), who had investigated family structure in Naples in Southern Italy, from anthropological, psychoanalytic, and sociological perspectives. 33 Additionally, the authors of Women of Courage refer to a cultural concept of Anne Swidler (Swidler, 1986), who defined culture not only in terms of norms, standards, and values, as Merton did, but also as a "dynamic set of practices and 'tools' with which groups of people approach varying needs and conditions" (Coser et al, 1999: 4), in other words, a "cultural toolkit" that is developed by women immigrants due to the necessities of daily life in the receiving society, the United States.…”

Section: Women Of Courage: European Immigrants In the Metropolis Of N...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Women of courage and the seedbed of autonomy in modernity: On the transnational influence of cultures on social structure in the work of Rose Laub Coser

Hoenig

2023

Journal of Classical Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines the contribution of Rose Laub Coser to sociological theory in the structural tradition. Laub Coser was one of the most successful women sociologists of her generation. She was born in Berlin in 1916 but left with her family in 1924 for Antwerp in Belgium, and went into exile in 1939 in New York. Thus, Laub Coser was familiar with many cultural worlds and languages. Although she primarily lived in the United States, the transnational influence of the metropolis of Berlin is manifest in her sociological work in several ways. Conceptually, this is relevant for Laub Coser’s reception of Georg Simmel’s Soziologie. In particular, her theory of the complexity of social roles as a seedbed of individual autonomy is founded on Simmel’s theory of the importance of conflict and ambivalence for individualization. Her multiple experiences of emigration and exile influenced Laub Coser’s work, including Women of Courage, an analysis of the social lives of Eastern European and Italian migrants in the metropolis of New York, and her internationally comparative studies on the family and women’s rise in the labor market. Laub Coser investigated the social consequences of having multiple group affiliations and the conditions for such individuals in the cultural and social structure of modernity. In her transnationally comparative work of migrant cultures, she demonstrated the scope of her theory of role complexity. Contrary to images of migration bare of gender and culture, Laub Coser interprets the individuals she studied in Women of Courage as active agents of migration and provides insights on the influence that cultural definitions of situations have had toward creating the social structure of modern society. Starting from Robert K. Merton’s role-set theory and integrating Simmel’s analysis of forms of social differentiation, Laub Coser analyzed the conditions and consequences of multiple group affiliations, their observability, and the ambivalences in “cross-cutting social circles” (Simmel), which create conditions for developing individuality and individualism. The cultural mandate for women to be socialized toward the “greedy institution” of the family offers only restricted role-sets and opportunities for articulating social roles, constraining their social competencies as autonomous individuals. Despite the alienating and anomic consequences of role complexity, Laub Coser valued its liberating potential. Possibly this theoretical orientation was also influenced by her own experience as an immigrant, sociologist, and political activist in the socialist women’s movement. The posthumously published study Women of Courage is based on a research project that began in the 1980s, comprising hundreds of qualitative interviews with women who had migrated to New York in the early 1920s, and who were at least 13 years old when they immigrated. The histories of these women demonstrate their role in enabling the social mobility of their families in the receiving society. They provided insights into how cultures change and how women migrants understood their lives in the New World.

show abstract

Section: Women Of Courage: European Immigrants In the Metropolis Of N...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Women of courage and the seedbed of autonomy in modernity: On the transnational influence of cultures on social structure in the work of Rose Laub Coser

Hoenig

2023

Journal of Classical Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Belief, Magic, and Anomie: Essays in Psychosocial Anthropology.

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Women of courage and the seedbed of autonomy in modernity: On the transnational influence of cultures on social structure in the work of Rose Laub Coser

Women of courage and the seedbed of autonomy in modernity: On the transnational influence of cultures on social structure in the work of Rose Laub Coser

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About