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In an age of specialization, Herbert Gans stands apart because his name and contributions are known throughout sociology. This is not because, like a previous generation of sociologists who worked in a generalist mode, he sought directly to influence sociology in its totality, but rather because he has made seminal contributions—and written classic works—in a remarkable number of different fields. His influence on the discipline as a whole has come from his distinct sensibility, which combines scholarship satisfying to the most professional of sociologists with writing that speaks to much broader publics, rigorous application of ethnographic and other methodologies with a catholic appreciation for good evidence whatever the source, and deeply felt democratic egalitarianism with tough-minded, social-scientific analysis of explanations for, and policies proposed to remedy, poverty and inequality.
Gans early on made enormously influential contributions to urban sociology, through his studies of urban ethnic communities in The Urban Villagers and of new suburban ones in The Levittowners, books that are still widely read four decades after their publication. The Urban Villagers was among the first sociological works to recognize the importance of second-generation communities descended from an immigration that had then been over for decades, and it thereby helped to found the study of ethnicity; its analysis of the linkage between urban ethnicity and social class retains the status of a classic statement.
Gans has also profoundly shaped the fields of mass media and culture. His rich observational study of newsrooms, which appeared as Deciding What’s News (now reissued in a 25th anniversary edition), went well beyond the then dominant research tradition by demonstrating the structuring roles of media organizations and of the institutionalized processes of news production; it remains unsurpassed as a model for studying the media and as a source of insights. He gave powerful new impetus to the sociology of culture with his book, Popular Culture and High Culture, which critiqued the superiority that the affluent and well educated attribute to their cultural preferences and argued for the right of every person to the culture he or she prefers. He has brought to these fields a sociological concern for democracy, the subject of his M.A. thesis, to which he returned later in his career with the publication of Middle American Individualism and Democracy and the News.
A thematic thread that appears throughout his writings is spun from the manifestations of class inequalities (this is, famously, the subtext of The Urban Villagers). His specific contributions to the study of poverty and inequality have been numerous (e.g., More Equality, The War Against the Poor) and benefit from his graduate work in planning, which trained and accustomed him to undertake sociological analyses and critiques of public policy. His writing on poverty has been important as an antidote to the neo-conservatives’ emphasis on the undeserving underclass; and indeed, he has debunked not only their arguments, but also critiqued the underclass concept and its users. He has even ventured into grand theorizing, proposing a radical version of structural functionalism in his often reprinted 1972 AJS article "The Positive Functions of Poverty."
A half century after his career began, Gans not only keeps abreast of sociological currents but continues to influence them, especially in the fields of race, ethnicity, and immigration. His concept of “symbolic ethnicity” informed a generation of research about the third- and fourth-generations descendants of European immigrants. With the concept of “second-generation decline,” forged by his reflection on the situations of the second generation to emerge from the newest wave of immigrants, he anticipated the theory of “segmented assimilation.” Most recently, he has theorized about the possibility of a new racial hierarchy emerging as a result of contemporary immigration. As always, his thinking on these and other topics is fresh and therefore widely read.
His sociological output has been prodigious: he has written 17 books and monographs and published nearly 200 articles and book chapters, Many of his writing is intended for both sociologists and general audiences. Not coincidentally, therefore, Gans has also been a trailblazer for the cause of “public sociology.” This was the subject of his presidential address to the ASA, where he was the first to call for “public sociology.” Subsequently, he received the ASA Award for Contributions to the Public Understanding of Sociology.
In sum, Herbert Gans is deserving of the ASA Award for a Career of Distinguished Scholarship because of his profound and extensive impacts on our discipline. These are indicated, above all, by the remarkable number of subfields where his work remains seminal and by his path-breaking efforts to communicate effectively with both sociologists and outsiders.
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