Albert Henry 'Chelly' Halsey (13 April 1923 – 14 October 2014) was a British
sociologist. He was Emeritus Professor of Social and Administrative Studies at the
, and a Fellow of
Nuffield College, Oxford
Nuffield College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is a graduate college and specialises in the social sciences, particularly economics, politics and sociology. Nuffield is one of Oxford's newer c ...
.
Halsey 'worked in what he called the "political arithmetic" tradition throughout his career, with the dual tasks of documenting the state of society, and addressing social and political issues through "experimental social administration"'
He presented the BBC's annual
Reith Lectures
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual BBC radio lectures given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribu ...
in 1978.
Education
Halsey was an adviser for
Anthony Crosland
Charles Anthony Raven Crosland (29 August 191819 February 1977) was a British Labour Party politician and author. A social democrat on the right wing of the Labour Party, he was a prominent socialist intellectual. His influential book '' The ...
; and on education played an '"activist" role in policy development in the UK and internationally, through his work on educational reform...and as research adviser to Crosland at the DES with the introduction of
comprehensive schooling in the UK'.
Generally accepted has been 'A. H. Halsey's assertion that in capitalist industrial societies "It is inevitable that the educational system should come into close relationship with the economy."'
Social consensus
'Halsey's creed of "ethical socialism" springs from a lasting Anglican belief. His background was not just working class, but respectable working class'.
Despite a hankering for social consensus in Britain, "as Halsey confesses, such a consensus became more difficult to sustain as the twentieth century proceeded; unfortunately the 'bases of social integration in Christian belief, national and imperial success, localised kinship and collective self-help institutions...were all to decay.'"
The Reith Lectures
In 1978 the BBC invited Halsey to present its annual
Reith Lectures
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual BBC radio lectures given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribu ...
. Across a series of six radio lectures, title
"Change in British Society"he explored a sociological perspective on contemporary Britain. The lectures examined topics such as class, status, the rise of organisations, the nuclear family and fraternity.
Selected works by Halsey
* ''Education, Economy, and Society: A Reader in the Sociology of Education'' (1961)
* ''Trends in British Society since 1900: A Guide to the Changing Social Structure of Britain'' (1972)
* ''Heredity and Environment'' (1977)
*
Change in British Society' BBC Reith Lectures (1978)
* ''Decline of Donnish Dominion: The British Academic Professions in the Twentieth Century'' (1992)
* ''No Discouragement: An Autobiography'' (1996)
* ''A History of Sociology in Britain'' (2004,
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
)
Selected works co-authored by Halsey and others
*''The British Academics'' (1971), co-authored with Martin A. Trow
*''Social Class and Educational Opportunity'' (1973), co-authored with
J. E. Floud and F. M. Martin
*''Power and Ideology in Education'' (1977), co-authored with Jerome Karabel
*''Twentieth-Century British Social Trends'' (2000), co-authored with Josephine Webb
Further reading
* Colin Crouch, A. F. Heath (editors) (1992) ''Social research and social reform: essays in honour of A. H. Halsey''
See also
*
Sociology of sociology
References
External links
*BBC Radio 4:
Change in British Society'
*Podcast:
Reith Lectures Archive 1976 - 2010'
THES articleArticle in ''The Spectator''Appearance on Desert Island Discs 4 May 2003
{{DEFAULTSORT:Halsey, A. H.
1923 births
2014 deaths
British sociologists
Comprehensive education
Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford