The death has been announced of the great Polish-British sociologist Stanislav Andreski, Professor Emeritus at the University of Reading. His books included Military Organization and Society (1954, rev. edn 1968, which first advanced the key concept of military participation ratio), Elements of Comparative Sociology (1964), Social Sciences as Sorcery (1974) and War, Revolutions and Dictatorships (1982).
Andreski was a long-term friend of Norbert Elias’s. My best memory of him was when he turned up at the conference on Elias’s work that Eric Dunning and I organised at Balliol College, Oxford, at the New Year, 1980.
The title of Andreski’s paper was “Protestantism, Capitalism and Syphilis”. I’ve always wished that I had thought of that.
There is an excellent obituary by Christie Davies in today’s Independent
Stephen
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Professor Stephen Mennell
School of Sociology
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4, IRELAND
Tel.: +353-1-716 8510
Fax: +353-1-716 1125
E-mail: Stephen.Mennell@ucd.ie
http://www.ucd.ie/sociology/staff/
mennell_stephen/index.html