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Colleagues Remember Peter Blau
Peter Michael Blau Peter Michael Blau died March 12 of adult respiratory distress syndrome. He was 84. He was professor emeritus at Columbia, a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Pitt Professor at Cambridge University, Senior Fellow at King’s College, Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an honorary professor at the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences. He completed his doctorate with Robert K. Merton at Columbia in 1952 and went on to develop theories that continue to be influential in the study of modern society. His endeavor was to develop systematic theoretical schemes to explain macrostructures and their impact on daily life. He wrote his dissertation on bureaucracy, which led to a book on exchange theory. For the next 50 years, Peter Blau studied macrostructural characteristics of society. His theories seek to explain how social phenomena such as upward mobility, occupational opportunity, heterogeneity, and population structures influence human behavior. He developed the methods used in sociology to draw out and map the diverse constellations of social forces. Miller McPherson has called this type of constellation mapping “Blau space.” Sociologists today use “Blau-space” to illustrate the effects of aspects of human society—cultural, evolutionary and institutional—which did not specifically enter Blau’s work. It is the unique feature of Blau’s scholarship that his theories were flexible enough to extend beyond the parameters of the field of his time. He is the author of hundreds of articles and 11 books, many of which are still widely read by students of sociology. He is considered one of the founders of contemporary American sociology and one of the most prominent scholars of his time. He taught many of today’s prominent sociologists. To his students and colleagues, he was known for his fairness, integrity, modesty, and humor. Former graduate students Craig Calhoun, Marshall Meyer, and Richard C. Scott wrote, “Peter Blau is not only one of today’s most influential sociologists, he is one of sociology’s finest people . . . . We never knew any [teacher] of greater intellectual honesty, dedication to sociology, and personal integrity. As time goes on, we grow more impressed with how remarkable these qualities are . . . . It is all the more pleasure, therefore, to know Peter Blau because he reassures us that fame and academic distinction can go hand in hand with a sense of humor and care for other people.” (Structures of Power and Constraint: Papers in Honor of Peter Blau, Calhoun, Meyer, Scott, eds. Cambridge: 1990) He was a professor at the University of Chicago from 1953 to 1970 and at Columbia University from 1970 to 1988. He was the President of the American Sociological Association in 1973. From 1979 through 1983, he taught at SUNY-Albany as Distinguished Professor. He taught in Tianjin in China at the Academy of Social Sciences as a Distinguished Honorary Professor in 1981 and 1987. He retired as a faculty member from Columbia University in 1988. He taught at UNC at Chapel Hill as the Robert Broughton Distinguished Research Professor from 1988 through 2001. He has received numerous distinguished scholar and career awards. The son of secular Jews, Peter Blau was born in Vienna, on February 7, 1918, the year the Austrio-Hungarian Empire fell. His mother said that he would usher in a more enlightened age, but of course, the opposite was true. Unlike Germany, where Hitler manipulated a democratic system, the party which Hitler took over in Austria was fascist. The National Party was in power from 1918-1938 and it prohibited free speech, religion, and activities not sanctioned by the government. At age 17, angered by the antidemocratic government, as well as the conditions of the working class in Europe generally, he wrote for the underground newspaper of the Socialist Worker’s Party, similar to the democratic socialist party. He wrote articles which spoke out against his government’s repressive regime and distributed the journal among leftists. The journal was discovered by the police. My father, still 17, was convicted of high treason and given a 10 year sentence in the federal prison in the center of Vienna. Ironically, the Austrian government led by Sushnig liberated my father when National Socialism gained momentum in Austria. A pact between Sushnig and Hitler lifted the ban on political activity. Political prisoners on both ends of the spectrum—national and democratic socialists alike—were freed from prisons. Hitler marched into the Heldenplatz in March of 1938 cheered by hundreds of thousands of Austrians. Soon after that my father stood on line at various embassies to get a visa. His parents chose to stay in Vienna, but sent their daughter to England on the kinder-transport. My father tried to escape over the Czech border but Nazis caught him at the border. He was kept in a border patrol for two months. During these months, the Nazi officers tortured and starved him, forcing him to eat only lard and completing exercises until he fainted. He was released on an officer’s whim, and went to Prague where he lived for a year. He fled Prague when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. He took a very dangerous risk by returning over the Czech border to visit his parents, who had moved to the Ghetto because of the Jewish laws. Meanwhile, a high school teacher, Fritz Redl, had arranged for the Spiegel family to sponsor my father’s affidavit in his immigration to America. The next day he caught the train to France, which turned out to be the last train before all the borders were closed completely. In France, he turned himself into the Allied forces because he knew that, with a German passport, he would be captured. The French Army sent him to a labor camp in Bordeaux where he was forced to work crushing grapes. Never a physically agile person, my father put a pitchfork through his foot. In our family, we make the joke never to buy Bordeaux from 1939. During his imprisonment, his visa number came up. An acquaintance who had some influence with the French government argued that the French Army should release Jews with visas and affidavits to other countries and went to Bordeaux to find my father. He immediately went to Le Havre to get a boat to America. In Le Havre, on line for boat tickets, he met graduates from the theological college Elmhurst. As fate would have it, they were in Europe to offer a scholarship to a Jewish refugee. Recognizing his potential and the danger he was still in, they offered it to him and gave him the address of Paul Lehmann, the son of Elmhurst’s President. An atheist his entire life, my father always spoke of how miraculous a gift that chance meeting turned out to be. He caught the last civilian boat leaving France. He arrived in New York City with a few clothes and less than 50 marks sewn into his belt. In New York, he contacted Paul Lehmann, a theologian, scholar, and philanthropist who would play the role of surrogate father and mentor throughout his life. After a few weeks practicing English, he took a train to Elmhurst College, spending the little money he had. It was at this time that the censored letters that my father had received periodically from his parents stopped coming. He learned 50 years later from the Austrian government the details of their deaths in Auschwitz in May 1942. He received his BA the same month that his parents were killed. In the Midwest, he gave speeches arguing for American intervention in Europe. When America did enter the war, my father enlisted in the Army and served for four years. Based on his fluency in German, he was made an interrogation officer. After the war, he entered graduate school at Columbia University, where he studied with Paul Lazarsfeld, Robert Lynd, and Robert Merton, three of the leading sociologists of their era. He is survived by his wife, Judith Blau, Professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; two daughters, Pamela Blau of Cambridge, MA, and Reva Blau of Wellfleet, MA; his sister Ruth Layland of Leicester, England; a cousin Eva Selka of Queens, NY; and one grandson, Ezra Fellman-Blau. Reva Blau (revablau@hotmail.com) Editor’s note: For an autobiographical essay see Blau, Peter M. (1995). “A Circuitous Path to Macrostructural Theory, “ Annual Review of Sociology. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc. Vol 21: 1-19.
In a department that included many luminaries—James Coleman, Otis Dudley Duncan, Everett Hughes, Peter Rossi, among others—Peter Blau, for me, belonged in a special category. I took my first course with him at the University of Chicago in 1956, a “seminar” on sociological theory (in a class of more than 50 graduate students). I found his lectures involving and inspiring. I will never forget the passion he brought to his teaching or the energy and intellectual discipline that marked his lectures A later course introduced me to his work on the “dynamics” of bureaucracy: how formal roles are enacted and rules interpreted in ways that reflect structural verities but introduce innovative elements. I became a convert and decided that the study of organizations would be my principal focus. Imagine my reaction when, in the process of working with him on my dissertation, he suggested that we pool our data in order to do a comparative study of bureaucracy, contrasting an agency he was studying with my own case. The title of our joint work, Formal Organizations: A Comparative Approach, 1962, was a bit audacious since the comparison involved only two rather similar organizations—both social welfare agencies—but it set the stage for the productive research programs subsequently launched by Blau (e.g., Blau and Schoenherr, 1971, The Structure of Organizations) and the Aston group (e.g., Pugh, Hickson, and Hinings, 1969 “An empirical taxonomy of structures of work organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly 14:115-26) in which the unit of analysis was the organization rather than the individual participant or work group. Our book also launched my own career and confirmed my commitment to the study of organizations as significant collective actors. Peter Blau represents for me the consummate professional. He was a productive scholar throughout his long career. His work exhibits continuous development and intellectual growth. He collaborated with many, diverse individuals, both peers and juniors. His work was grounded in deep knowledge of and respect for the grand theorists of the 19th century, but he remained open to new theoretical ideas and methodologies. He exhibited high professional integrity and, although devoted to his scholarship was equally committed to teaching and to mentoring juniors. He assaulted his projects with enormous enthusiasm, energy, and endurance, inspiring and exhausting his research assistants. All of these daunting intellectual qualities were tempered by his sense of humor, personal warmth, old-world charm, and fundamental human decency. He will be much missed…and long remembered. W. Richard Scott I prepared for lunches with Peter more or less the same way I prepared for my classes. At times, I almost felt I should be taking notes during the meal. He seemed to have read everything and was particularly interested in the work of junior scholars. Lunches were mostly harmonious affairs, especially because of the glimpse into the past five decades of sociology he offered. The only disagreement we could never settle was over which was his best book. I told him that I thought it was Exchange And Power In Social Life, because of its social-psychological realism and focus on interpersonal dynamics. After a number of fruitless attempts to persuade him, I finally realized that he really didn’t concern himself very much with his past work. He always seemed incredibly involved in his current projects. I guess that’s what kept him forever young. Howard Aldrich Peter Blau, a refugee from the Anschluss, used to tell a joke from his youth that involved God assigning attributes to the various nations. The Lord proposed to make all Germans smart, honest, and National Socialists. The Archangel Michael, however, convinced God that this was too generous. And so it was decreed that each German should have only two of the three qualities. Peter told this story to illustrate the idea that social identities and their complex interrelationships might be organized according to an underlying logic. He also developed this theme into a powerful sociological theory, showing as well as any sociologist ever how a significant model could be built on the basis of parsimonious assumptions, proceeding by arithmetical logic, and generating testable propositions. That same formal theorist, though, was also one of the most important empirical researchers of the 20th century, using ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, survey data, and comparative analysis, all to impressive effect. His work remains among the most influential in the sociology of organizations, stratification, and exchange relations. Peter was also a teacher able to challenge and encourage at the same time. And so he proved that though a broad empirical generalization might suggest otherwise, God did not dictate that sociologists could not be simultaneously great theorists, researchers, and teachers. Peter always thought the chance to be a sociologist was a wonderful gift. He embraced the opportunity fully and gratefully. While some were always anxious for their reputations, Peter truly worried more about knowledge itself. He treasured the hope that his sociology would help to improve society, but, above all, he worked tirelessly to improve sociology. And with his enormous contributions to theory, research, and dozens of students, he succeeded. Craig Calhoun Despite the Austrian accent, which never quite disappeared, Peter Blau was the quintessential American sociologist. His five-decade career spawned three major revolutions in sociological theory since the middle of the century. The first heralded the introduction of fundamental notions of exchange in social interaction, opening the door to the influx of microeconomic ideas into sociological theory. The second period of his extraordinary intellectual journey introduced (with his collaborator Otis Dudley Duncan) the theory of status attainment, still the core sociological view of societal stratification. His third and culminating contribution was to develop a general macrostructural theory of society, now ironically the major intellectual force opposing homo economicus in sociological work. Any one of these achievements would have elevated Blau into the very highest reaches of the profession, but the combination of all three is without parallel in the field. Peter was not only at the forefront of theory in sociology, but was an extraordinary human being. I will never forget the kindness Peter showed to me in his immediate response to a request from an unknown junior colleague. The chance to correspond, and ultimately to become friends with him has marked one of the most important turning points in the careers of many of us who follow him. During a reception for me at the Blau household only a few days after Peter had undergone bypass surgery, I remarked to Judith, his wife, and a remarkable intellectual figure in her own right, that it seemed dangerous for him to be entertaining so soon after a major operation. Her unforgettable response was classic Blau: “Oh, it’s perfectly all right. Peter regards the body as simply a mind delivery system.” While we will have to carry on now without his corporeal essence, the many products of his mind will continue to guide us into the new century. Miller McPherson My first acquaintance with Peter Blau was through The American Occupational Structure when I was a graduate student. At the University of Wisconsin in the early 1970s, this book was the stimulus for a flood of work expanding and modifying social mobility and status attainment models. When I went on to teach graduate social stratification courses, I came to appreciate Blau and Duncan’s effort even more, arguing with students that it was not functionalist and did not ignore structure. I met Peter Blau on several occasions and read his work developing a formal structural theory, but I still thought of him largely in terms of his contributions to social stratification in the 1970s. Then, at UNC, we were very lucky to attract Judith Blau to our faculty. Peter came as a trailing spouse, but was almost immediately an active member of the department. I found that he was anything but stuck in past decades. He had a lively interest in the latest happenings in the world, the theatre, and dance, in the field in general and in other sociology departments specifically. At the same time, his long and rich life enlightened his perspective on the present. He actively sought out his colleagues, going down the faculty list systematically arranging lunches with us. I could count on him to be an interesting, charming companion at a meal or over drinks. Although he was in the department less and less often in recent years, he was still a wonderful observer of current events and a presence at department social gatherings. My last lunch with him was in late January. I will miss not having another. Rachel A. Rosenfeld As I think about Peter, I think about a bond we shared that went beyond our commitment to sociology and beyond his well-deserved fame for path breaking and wide-ranging works that inspired more than one generation. I will let others praise his impressive contributions to our field and would like instead to touch on more personal concerns. Peter, like myself, was an exile from the land of his birth. He actually absorbed considerably more of the culture of Vienna than did I but we were both compelled to pull up roots and make our way through strange new worlds. That gave us the singular stamp—of exile, of loss, of broken promises—that marks the uprooted. And it created an instant empathy between us. I also think that having two cultures housed in one’s self engenders that double vision so fruitful for the study of human behavior. Hence great trauma can—and certainly did in Peter’s case—spawn great creativity. I recall one of our last conversations some years back when I mentioned to him that I had just come back from a visit to Vienna and that it was wonderful to reconnect with the streets, the sounds, and the food of my lost childhood. Do you have that sort of experience when you go back? I asked. I have not gone back, he answered in that soft voice of his, and I never will. That stayed in my mind and returned today as I sought to honor his life and his memory. Suzanne Keller The first time I met Peter Blau, very early in my career, was at a conference in Albany. I knew who he was but he, I am sure, had no idea who I was. At the end of my talk on exchange networks there were a number of tough questions from the audience. I stood frozen for a few minutes as the man I knew was Peter Blau stood up to speak. My fear melted when, instead of addressing yet another tough question my way, he responded to the former question defending my results. I developed a fondness for him from that moment on. I have read Exchange and Power in Social Life from cover to cover at least 20 times, and I still teach from it. My copy is covered with ink, and the pages are yellow. It is, in my view, one of the most important books in sociology. It had a sweeping goal and a breathtaking approach. It was audacious. And, it covered new ground. It was one of the first comprehensive efforts to build bridges between micro-level theories of action and macro-level social structures. “The aim of this book is to contribute to an understanding of social structure on the basis of an analysis of the social processes that govern the relations between individuals and groups. The basic question that is being raised is how social life becomes organized into increasingly complex structures of association among men” (Blau, 1964: 2). Peter and I have crossed paths many times since that first contact. In Chapel Hill, I often saw him at his favorite restaurant. Every time he had an engaging smile and an accent that grew thicker with each encounter. Colleagues, students, friends, and family will miss him. His work will continue to challenge us and Exchange and Power, among his many other contributions to sociology, will leave an enduring legacy. And, I will never forget that conference. Karen S. Cook No doubt Peter Blau advised hundreds of graduate students during his long and distinguished career, but I had the privilege of being his last doctoral student. For several years, initially I was Peter’s research assistant on empirical studies designed to test the macrolevel theory, “Heterogeneity and Inequality,” published in 1977. He remained enthusiastic about the potential for his “primitive” theory to form the basis of a more rigorous, analytical approach to the study of social structure. Although the various tests we undertook were guided by his axioms and associated theorems, he continued to meld analytical insights with empirical observations in a creative manner when rigorous empirical tests indicated the need to revise his theory. I believe, Peter’s approach to “positivistic” research was much more sophisticated and nuanced than many of his critics seemed to realize, or were willing to admit. Peter’s approach to my dissertation reflects his devotion to empirically testing theoretical models. Although my use of multidimensional statistical decomposition techniques modestly challenged some of his theoretical assumptions and deductions, he willingly accepted and supported my research posed to his theory after he was satisfied that the methods used were an improvement upon previous tests. It was a distinct pleasure to work closely with Peter because his first-rate mind retained his inquisitive approach to solving puzzles and paradoxes. Although he firmly believed in his approach to social theory and could be single minded and demanding, I do not think he was ever dogmatic when he encountered the alternative perspectives that some of us presented to him. In closing, a few words about the man, rather than the scholar, because his published works are available to read and interpret. I shall remember Peter for his wit, his love of the theater, and his keen interest in discussing current events. Moreover, I will remember Peter as a humanist who ended his books with relatively optimistic portrayals of how his theoretical insights might help make the world a better place for everyone to live. I suppose that was a bit old fashioned. Most of us would be better scholars if we shared that old-fashioned trait of creating our theoretical and empirical edifices in the service of the ambitious and somewhat quixotic goals that undergirded Peter Blau’s research agenda. It was an honor and privilege to have been Peter Blau’s last student. I am proud that my approach to sociology was honed by hundreds of conversations with Peter. But it is the man for whom I came to adore, and who I shall surely miss more and more as time passes. Ritchie L. Milby Most sociologists feel somewhat uneasy about the worth of sociology and of their own intellectual achievements, and are likely to offer an evasive, self-deprecatory answer to the demand, “Tell me what you’ve been working on lately.” They feel open to attack. By contrast, Peter was so dedicated to continual sociological inquiry that he would always welcome another companion in this search. He cared greatly, and was passionately for or against a wide range of sociological claims. You had to be ready to defend the theories you proposed. Not for him the understated assertion, the cool restrained analysis. About intimate matters, or his personal history in Hitler’s epoch, on the other hand, he was close-mouthed. Those near to him say that he began to “open up” in later years, but I think that in all those decades I never heard him utter a full paragraph about his personal hegira. Later, I shall comment on his experience. We were peers and friends for more than a half-century, and were colleagues in two departments. Both of us served during our one good war, he in the Army, and I in the Navy. He went to Columbia University a few months afterwards, but a few years later became an instructor in our department at Wayne University, where I had been teaching since taking my degree. Both of us were lucky to be part of Wayne at that time. It was the center of exciting intellectual networks. A new generation of brilliant people in several fields began to head for stardom in that postwar period: Arthur Danto the philosopher of art; the two Litwaks, Eugene and Leo; a core of sophisticated methodologists including Paul K Hatt, the Russian sociologist of literature, Vera Sandemirsky (later, Dunham); Peter’s first wife Zena Smith and her sister who married Eugene Litwak; Fritz Redl (not just Peter’s “high school teacher” and visa helper, but a pioneer in developing treatments for young schizophrenics, and many others. Wayne offered a stimulating brew . Although he had already given three years of wartime service to his new country, the transition was not all smooth. And in spite of the postwar revelations about the Holocaust, the American academy did not open its collective hearts to our refugees. Our older mid-Western colleagues were no exception. They did not absorb this young instructor easily. He often seemed stiff and formal, in dress and manner, and never unbent to gossip about himself or his wartime experiences. Worse, both his students and our somewhat older colleagues could not always decipher his English, even though he had been in the country for about a decade. I thought any ambitious young man could do something about that, because Wayne enjoyed an excellent speech clinic. He said he would consider my solicitous but unsought advice. Years later, after he had achieved considerable academic success, he once chortled in triumph to me, pointing out that I had simply been wrong. My advice had been simply misplaced—he had not really needed to improve his English at all! Peter was enriched, as I was, within those groups, and in turn contributed his own sparkle. But the talented do elicit and stimulate help from others. It is especially the other talented who help—for good sociological reasons—and all of us take note of the very bright. In recounting how he had this or that success, Peter sometimes said that he had been lucky. People with talent often have that kind of “luck.” Some of the Wayne links also had important links with Cornell, and so he did not have to acclimate himself to the Midwest for long, linguistically or otherwise. And only a couple of years after he began teaching at Cornell he was on his way to the Chicago department. Like many who suffered humiliation and sorrow at the hands of the Nazis, Peter Blau did not at first tell others about any of his personal tale. His own account of how he personally came to macrostructural theory is remarkable for its claim to being an autobiographical essay, while remaining nearly mum about most details. Many Holocaust survivors felt they could not tell this or that detail, for it would lead to more and more hurtful remembrances, and especially in the first decade after reaching safety. They also continued to feel guilty for having left, and survived. They feel their own wounds pale, compared with those of their parents and others who suffered and were murdered. Peter lived his first twenty years under an essentially fascistic government, the National Party, which also imprisoned him. His mother did not wish to leave the country when Hitler took over a cheering Austria, and his father did. They stayed, and in 1942 both were murdered in Auschwitz. He was given ugly treatment by the Nazi border patrol when he tried to escape to Czechoslovakia, though they finally let him go on to Prague. When he was in the U.S. Army he was used for his German language skills. Once a friend of ours, the sociologist Suzanne Keller, told him of her visit to Vienna, where she was emotionally moved as she connected her childhood memories with the postwar city. She asked him about his own responses. It is therefore not surprising that he could say to her (though it was untrue), that he had never gone back to Vienna, and he never would do so. In fact, he was in Vienna in 1953 (on his way to the International Sociological Society meetings at Liege), and with wife and in-laws, but the wounds were still so painful that he would not speak German at all, not even to the Viennese officials who gave him the records of his parents’ death at Auschwitz. But joking was part of his life too. We often joshed one another. When both of us were senior professors at Columbia University, he was delighted when I complained to him about his working harder than I. His apartment on Claremont was just above mine, and his study was just above my bedroom. When I had given up work long past midnight, I would continue to hear him pacing back and forth, as he worked on his analyses. His relentless drive, I claimed, made me nervous, for he was getting ahead of me. He was even more gleeful when I said he reminded me of the great Kingsley Davis, who made some of his colleagues uneasy, for even after arriving at one of his parties they might hear his typewriter through the walls, as he pushed ahead on another contribution to sociology. In fact, Peter knew that I really did respect him greatly for his continued dedication, and rejoiced that he continued to make serious contributions even in his final decade of life. We are diminished by losing him, but his gifts to the field will long continue to enrich all of us. William J. Goode |