In Memoriam - Timothy L. McDaniel

Timothy McDaniel

 

TIMOTHY L. MCDANIEL, 1947-2009

 

Timothy Lambert McDaniel, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, died in San Diego on March 10, 2009, after a brave fight against colon cancer that lasted more than a decade.  He was one of the leading comparative-historical sociologists of his generation, an inspiring teacher, and a man of unwavering probity and extraordinary erudition. A dedicated scholar, he contributed greatly to the growth of the university during his three decades on the faculty.

Tim was born in San Francisco, California on October 11, 1947.  He received his undergraduate education at Yale and at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from which he graduated in 1972.   He began his graduate studies at the University of North Carolina, at that time planning to specialize in the study of Latin America  (he had lived for extended periods in Chile and Northeast Brazil), but his growing interest in the comparative study of revolutions prompted him to transfer to the University of California, Berkeley.  At Berkeley, he set about learning the Russian language and read omnivorously, primarily under the guidance of the historian Reginald Zelnik.  Having lived in Chile during the Allende revolution and the US-inspired coup, Tim now turned his attentions to a revolution of much greater notoriety and world-historical consequence.  He was soon busy with a thesis on the Russian labor movement and its connections to the Russian Revolution. Completing his dissertation in 1979, he joined the department at UCSD, a place that would be his intellectual home throughout the remainder of his career.

During his first decade and a half at UCSD, Tim spent three years heading the UC program in the USSR (as it was on the first occasion) and Russia.  Working under often extraordinarily difficult and even dangerous conditions (he arrived in Leningrad, for example, four days after the attempted coup against Gorbachev), he served as a mentor and guide to a generation of students, many of whom became lifelong friends.  In addition, he acquired an extensive first hand acquaintance with Russian culture and society that deepened and enriched his scholarship.  On campus, he played a major role in the foundation of Eleanor Roosevelt College, was very active in the Academic Senate, and served five years as chair of his department.  His courses were always extremely demanding, but they were packed with enthusiastic students, many of whom went on to achieve great distinction in a wide variety of fields.  When the campus instituted an award for its finest teachers, Tim deservedly won the award in its very first year, when competition was fiercest.  And in later years, as he developed an increasing interest in the Islamic world, a still broader array of students flocked to take his classes.

Tim's enduring reputation, beyond his impact on his many students, rests on three remarkable books, each of a very different character.  The first, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, is a massive, magisterial monograph that displays his immense learning, his deep knowledge of archival sources used by few other Western scholars, and his remarkable originality.  Autocracy, Capitalism, and Revolution in Russia (1988) is one of the most outstanding discussions of the revolutionary process in Russia to appear in the past quarter century.

After the outbreak of the Iranian revolution, Tim became fascinated with its similarities and differences with its Russian counterpart, and the upshot was  Autocracy, Modernization and Revolution in Russia and Iran (1991), an incisive and carefully considered book that immediately took its place as one of a handful of seminal studies of comparative revolutions.  The Agony of the Russian Idea which appeared in 1996 is very different again, an extended essay in cultural analysis that draws upon a dazzling range of sources to examine all aspects of Russian society and its culture from Peter the Great to the first years of Boris Yeltsin, and to demonstrate some remarkably stable features that have distinguished Russia under both the Tsars and Communism, and have consistently undermined its failed attempts to modernize.  An intellectual tour de force written by a major scholar at the height of his powers, it was deeply admired (among others) by George Kennan, and by Khrushchev's granddaughter, Nina.  At his death, Tim was at work on a fourth major book, a close interrogation of the relationship between Islam and modernity, an aspect of his growing engagement with the problematic relationships between religion and social change.  That manuscript, sadly, remains incomplete.

Tim is survived by his mother, Eloise McDaniel; by his twin brother Patrick; his wife Debbie and their son, Ryan; and by his sister Cheryl Erickson and her husband, Jim.  He will be deeply missed by all who knew him. 

A memorial to celebrate his life was held at the faculty club at the University of California, San Diego, on Monday, April 13.

The department has established an award for an outstanding ERC undergraduate, to be given annually.  Those wishing to contribute to this fund should send a check made out to UC Regents, to Stephanie Navrides, MSO, Sociology Department 0533.

- Professor Andrew Scull            

Department of Sociology    

 

In Memoriam - Bennett Berger

Bennett Berger

 

BENNETT BERGER, 1926-2005

 

Bennett Berger, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, died November 10 at his home in La Jolla. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer. He was 79.

Professor Berger's research and writing covered several fields, including suburbanization, youth culture , counter-culture and communes. Such a bare recital of "fields" (a term he hated) does injustice to the thrust of his interest. He was focused on the images of public attention. Thus in his first book, Working-Class Suburb: A study of Auto Workers in Suburbia (1960)he asked: "Does living in suburbs create a unique style of life or do residents continue to practice the cultures they bring with them?" He observed and interviewed auto workers living in a suburb of San Jose, mostly new home owners with middle-class incomes. Residence in suburbia had little effect on styles of life. Berger concluded that the idea of a suburban culture was a myth. But he did not stop there. He was interested in why and to whom the myth existed, for some as an aspiration, for others a nightmare.

His interest in the cultures of America and the images of them in public discourse was the center of his formidable contributions to Sociology. He published a number of papers and book reviews on what he called the myth of a unique American youth culture He criticized the view that adolescent culture was unique to youth. For Berger it was at one with the American emphasis on glamour, romance, sports and popularity backed up by parents' and the schools' efforts to promote solidarity. These thoughts and observations are collected in his 1973 book Looking for America: Essays on Youth, Suburbia and Other American Obsessions.

These themes of cultural imagery were continued in his many papers and other books. Chief among these was his 1981 observational study, The Survival of a Counter-Culture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life Among Rural Communards. Here again his focus is on the self-images of the commune dwellers and the contrary actions which practical activities demanded. What he called "ideological work" was the ways this was made acceptable.

As he often said, he was born in Brooklyn, raised in the Bronx but did not grow up until he came to Berkeley as an adult. He served as a Marine in the Pacific during World War II. Was a high school athlete and once tried out for the NY Giant farm system. He was, for a brief time, a singer with a popular music band. He did his undergraduate work at Hunter College and has a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley where he was a lecturer for one year. He was a faculty member in the School of Communications at the University of Illinois. After four years he left to assume the Chairmanship of the Sociology department at UC Davis in 1963. He joined UCSD ten years later.

At UCSD he served as Chair for three years; was active on many committees and since retirement in 1991 was on the advisory group for the Theatre and Dance Department. He was active in Sociological meetings, conferences and guest lectureships and was the editor of the major review journal Contemporary Sociology (1975-78) He is survived by his daughters, Jane Berger, of Augsburg, Germany, Nora Mitchell of Mendocino, CA , Stephanie Berger of Long Beach, CA, a son, Kenneth Berger of San Francisco ,CA and one grandchild, Sarsh Eith of Augsburg.

His wit, his insight and his analytic skill will be deeply missed.

A memorial gathering was held Tuesday, November 29, 2005 in the International Center on the UCSD campus.

- Professor Richard Madsen
Department of Sociology