Social Roles and Social Institutions: Essays in Honor of Rose Laub Coser

The concept of social roles highlights sociology's distinctive approach to understanding human behavior. Social roles link behavior to structural positions and social expectations. They are important connecting rods between the individual and large-scale societal analysis. Consequently, role theory is an essential tool for understanding social institutions, the nature of interpersonal influence, socialization, and the ways in which individuals define no less than are defined by structural change. Bennett M. Berger provides a rich informal context for understanding how this has come about in American social science.

Judith R. Blau is professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 2012 she won the Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology from the American Sociological Association. She is the author of Architects and Firms and The Shape of Culture.

Norman Goodman is Distinguished Teaching Professor and Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His books include Personality and Decision Processes; Marriage, Family, and Intimate Relationships and Introduction to Sociology.

Bennett M. Berger, a sociologist for thirty years, is professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of An Essay on Culture.