The Dialectic of Fact and Value: Foundations of a Humanist Social Science

About Philip Selznick

Philip Selznick has been one of the most seminal writers and teachers in American sociology. His books on social organization TVA and the Grass Roots(1949), The Organizational Weapon (1952), and Leadership in Administration(1957) are landmarks in the field and repeatedly cited by scholars in the field. In 1962, Selznick founded the Center for the Study of Law and Society on the U.C. Berkeley Campus which, under his guidance sand chairmanship, became world renowned in the field of sociology of law. His article on the “Sociology of Law” which appeared in Sociology Today in 1959 was the first major article by an American sociologist in this field. This was followed by two additional seminal articles, one on “Sociology and Natural Law” in 1961 and another on the “Sociology of Law” that appeared in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences in 1968. These articles stress he idea of law as an aspiration and an achievement rather than as a form of coercion. These ideas are elaborated in his major book Law, Society, and Industrial Justice published in 1969. The introductory text in sociology hat he wrote in 1955 with Leonard Broom has just appeared in its’ fifth edition in 1973. Broom and Selznick on sociology has become renowned as the leading introductory text in the field for many years. The text has made Selznick’s name familiar to literally hundreds of thousands of students, perhaps numbering into more than a million. A much smaller number, who his courses, appreciated his enormous enthusiasm and clarity as a lecturer, for it was from his commitment to the introductory lecture course that this text grew.