"THE MAN WHO COMMITTED A HUNDRED BURGLARIES": MARK BENNEY'S STRANGE AND EVENTFUL SOCIOLOGICAL CAREER. Issue 4 (3rd September 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lee, Raymond M.
• Is Part Of: Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences. Volume 51:Issue 4(2015)
• Page Start: 409
• Page End: 433
• Publication Date: 2015-09-03
• Subjects: Psychology -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Periodicals; 150
• DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.21745
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-5061

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title> <x xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>This article examines the life and career of the sociologist Mark Benney. It describes the processes, not all of them edifying, by which he made the transition from life as a career criminal, via literature, to become a sociologist first at the London School of Economics and then at the University of Chicago. Benney's career is then used to illuminate particular episodes in the history of sociology, including the attempt to introduce into British sociology in the period after the Second World War quantitative survey techniques of the kind that were then becoming more widely used in the United States, and his work with David Riesman on the Interview Project, Riesman's attempt to develop a empirically based sociology of the interview.</p> </abstract>