James Samuel Coleman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| James Samuel Coleman | |
 James Samuel Coleman
|
|
| Born | May 12, 1926 Bedford, Indiana |
|---|---|
| Died | March 25, 1995 Chicago |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | sociological theorist |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Doctoral advisor | Paul Lazarsfeld |
James Samuel Coleman (b. May 12, 1926, Bedford, Indiana - d. March 25, 1995, Chicago) was an American sociological theorist who studied the sociology of education, public policy, and was one of the earliest users of the term "social capital". His Foundations of Social Theory stands as one of the most important sociological contributions of the late-20th century.
The son of James and Maurine Coleman, he spent his early childhood in Bedford, Indiana and then moved to Louisville, Kentucky. After graduating in 1944, he enrolled to a small school in Virginia but left to enlist in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After he was discharged, he transferred to Purdue University.
Coleman received his bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University in 1949, and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1955, where he stood under the influence of Paul Lazarsfeld. He achieved renown with two studies on problem solving: An Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (1964) and Mathematics of Collective Action (1973). He taught at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, at Johns Hopkins University (1959-1973), and then again at Chicago, where he directed the National Opinion Research Center. In 1991 Coleman was elected President of the American Sociological Association.
Coleman is widely cited in the field of sociology of education. In the 1960s, he and several other scholars were commissioned to write a report on educational equality in the U.S. It was one of the largest studies in history, with more than 150,000 students in the sample. The result was a massive report of over 700 pages. That 1966 report — titled "Equality of Educational Opportunity" (or often simply called the "Coleman Report") — fueled debate about "school effects" that has continued since. [1] Another controversial finding of the Coleman Report was that, on average, black schools were funded on a nearly equal basis by the 1960s. (This was probably due to the fact that many Southern states vastly raised their spending on black schools in the 1950s, in the hopes of avoiding compliance with the Brown v. Board of Education decision.)
This research also suggested that socially disadvantaged black students profited from schooling in racially-mixed classrooms. This was a catalyst for the implementation of desegregation busing systems, ferrying black students to integrated schools. Following up on this, in 1975 Coleman published the results of further research, this time into the effects of school bussing systems intended to bring lower-class black students into higher-class mixed race schools. His conclusion was that white parents moved their children out of such schools in large numbers; this is known as "white flight". His 1966 article had explained that black students would only benefit from integrated schooling if there was a majority of white students in the classroom; the mass bussing system had failed.
In addition, Coleman was a pioneer in the construction of mathematical models in sociology, through his book, Introduction to Mathematical Sociology. A major treatise he wrote, Foundations of Social Theory, made a major contribution to contemporary efforts to produce a more rigorous form of theorizing in sociology.[citation needed]
Coleman wrote more than thirty books and published numerous articles. He also created an educational corporation that developed and marketed "mental games" aimed at improving the abilities of disadvantaged students.
At the time of his death, he was engaged in a long-term study titled "The High School and Beyond," which examined the lives and careers of 75,000 people who had been high school juniors and seniors in 1980. In addition to his strong education contributions, Coleman specialized in the study of communities, the subject of his book Foundations of Social Theory.
[edit] Selected works
- Union Democracy (1956, with Seymour Martin Lipset)
- The Adolescent Society (1961)
- Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (1964)
- Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966)
- Youth: Transition to Adulthood (1973)
- High School Achievement (1982)
- Individual Interests and Collective Action (1986)
- Social Theory, Social Research, and a Theory of Action, article in American Journal of Sociology 91: 1309-1335 (1986).
- Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital, article in The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure, pp. S95-S120 (1988).
- Foundations of Social Theory (1990)
