Kai Theodor Erikson (born February 12, 1931) is an Austrian-born American sociologist, noted as an authority on the social consequences of catastrophic events. He served as the 76th president of the

American Sociological Association The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology. Founded in December 1905 as the American Sociological Society at Johns Hopkins University by a group of fif ...

Life and career

Erikson was born in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, the son of Joan Erikson (née Serson), a Canadian-born artist, dancer, and writer, and

Erik Erikson Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 – 12 May 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity ...

, a German-born famed psychologist and sociologist. His maternal grandfather was an Episcopalian minister, and Erikson was raised a Protestant. Erikson graduated from

The Putney School The Putney School is an independent high school in Putney, Vermont. The school was founded in 1935 by Carmelita Hinton on the principles of the Progressive Education movement and the teachings of its principal exponent, John Dewey. It is a co-edu ...

Vermont Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provin ...

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

and earned a PhD at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. He joined the faculty of the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

in 1959 where he held a joint appointment at the School of Medicine and in the Department of Sociology. There he met his future wife Joanna Slivka, who became Joanna Erikson. In 1963 he moved to

Emory University Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...

, and followed that with a move to

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

in 1966. He now holds the title of William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of

Sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

and

American Studies American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinary field of scholarship that examines American literature, history, society, and culture. It traditionally incorporates literary criticism, historiography and critical theory. Schol ...

. Erikson edited the ''

Yale Review ''The Yale Review'' is the oldest literary journal in the United States. It is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. It was founded in 1819 as ''The Christian Spectator'' to support Evangelicalism. Over time it began to publish more on hi ...

'' from 1979 to 1989.

Wayward Puritans

''Wayward Puritans'' is the title of his first book (1966) which contains a chapter on

sociology of deviance Deviance or the sociology of deviance explores the actions and/or behaviors that violate social norms across formally enacted rules (e.g., crime) as well as informal violations of social norms (e.g., rejecting folkways and mores). Although devi ...

and a chapter on the

Massachusetts Bay Colony The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as th ...

before three illustrations of deviance within the colony. The first was associated with

Anne Hutchinson Anne Hutchinson (née Marbury; July 1591 – August 1643) was a Puritan spiritual advisor, religious reformer, and an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy which shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her ...

and Governor Vane and called the

Antinomian Controversy The Antinomian Controversy, also known as the Free Grace Controversy, was a religious and political conflict in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. It pitted most of the colony's ministers and magistrates against some adherents of ...

. The second was concerned with an intrusion of

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

s, while the third was the

Salem witch trials The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom w ...

. The book notes the deviation from the City upon a Hill ideal set by

John Winthrop John Winthrop (January 12, 1587/88 – March 26, 1649) was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led t ...

. H. Lawrence Ross described the book as "fascinating and superbly written". The sociological premise explored is from

Émile Durkheim David Émile Durkheim ( or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, al ...

: "a function of deviance is to define the normative boundaries of the group." He notes that it is "a remarkable exception to the well-known tendency of sociological research to focus on the here and now." On the statistical analysis Ross comments: "the reasons to expect constancy of deviance over time, such as the limited capacity of the control system, would seem to predict stability of convictions as much as stability of offenders, and in consequence the analysis here seems unsatisfactory.”H. Lawrence Ross (1967) "Review: ''Wayward Puritans'' by Erikson,

Social Forces ''Social Forces'' (formerly ''The Journal of Social Forces'') is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal of social science published by Oxford University Press for the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hi ...

46:462

Aftermaths of disasters

Erikson subsequently studied a number of disasters in the context of their sociological implications, including the nuclear fallout in the

Marshall Islands The Marshall Islands ( mh, Ṃajeḷ), officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands ( mh, Aolepān Aorōkin Ṃajeḷ),'' () is an independent island country and microstate near the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the Inte ...

in 1954; the Buffalo Creek flood in

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the ...

in 1972 (resulting in the award-winning 1978 book ''Everything In Its Path''); the

Three Mile Island nuclear accident The Three Mile Island accident was a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island, Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor in Pennsylvania, United States. It began at 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979. It is the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclea ...

in 1979; the

Exxon Valdez oil spill The ''Exxon Valdez'' oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989. '' Exxon Valdez'', an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company bound for Long Beach, California struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, w ...

in 1989; and the genocide in Yugoslavia of 1992 to 1995.

Bibliography

*''Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance'' (1966) *''Everything in its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood'' (1978) *''A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community'' (1994)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Erikson, Kai T. 1931 births Living people Austrian emigrants to the United States American social sciences writers American sociologists Environmental sociologists Presidents of the American Sociological Association Reed College alumni University of Chicago alumni University of Pittsburgh faculty Yale University faculty The Putney School alumni