{"id":26355,"date":"2025-04-21T22:37:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T22:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26355"},"modified":"2025-04-21T23:27:38","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T23:27:38","slug":"herbert-j-gans-97-dies-upended-myths-on-urban-and-suburban-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26355","title":{"rendered":"Herbert J. Gans, 97, Dies; Upended Myths on Urban and Suburban Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A leading sociologist, he explored American society up close \u2014 living in a Levittown at one point \u2014 to gain insight into issues of race, class, the media and even the Yankees.<\/p>\n

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Herbert J. Gans, an eminent sociologist who studied the communities and cultural bastions of America up close and shattered popular myths about urban and suburban life, poverty, ethnic groups and the news media, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 97. <\/p>\n

His death was confirmed by his son, David Gans.<\/p>\n

A refugee from Nazi Germany who became one of the nation\u2019s most influential social critics, Dr. Gans taught at Columbia and other leading universities for 54 years, wrote a dozen books and hundreds of articles and shaped the thinking of government and corporate policymakers, colleagues in sociology and a wide public audience.<\/p>\n

His writing was a tour of Americana from the postwar years into the new millennium, exploring race relations, economic problems, highbrow and popular cultures, nostalgia for the rural past and a plethora of provocative questions: Why do the poor get poorer and the rich richer? Can Jews and Italians get along in Canarsie? Is landmarks preservation elitist? And what\u2019s to be done about the New York Yankees?<\/p>\n

He was also a liberal activist, opposing the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration\u2019s efforts to muzzle the press, testifying for the comedian Lenny Bruce in his 1964 obscenity trial, campaigning for the release of imprisoned sociologists in Communist Hungary, and serving as a consultant to antipoverty programs and city planners.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When racial riots racked urban America, he drafted part of the Kerner Commission\u2019s 1967 report on the causes, and testified that the uprisings were due, above all, to segregation and unemployment, and that only a national jobs program, desegregation and income-redistribution efforts could solve the crisis.<\/p>\n

As president of the American Sociological Association in 1988-89, he urged colleagues to get closer to their subjects and to write more intelligibly. Sociological studies had long been academically insular, dense with statistics and scientific jargon. But Dr. Gans set an example by inserting himself into the communities and institutions he studied, becoming what he called a \u201cparticipant-observer,\u201d and writing lucid prose for ordinary readers.<\/p>\n

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A leading sociologist, he explored American society up close \u2014 living in a Levittown at one point \u2014 to gain insight into issues of race, class, the media and even the Yankees.Herbert J. Gans, an eminent sociologist who studied the communities and cultural bastions of America up close and shattered popular myths about urban and suburban life, poverty, ethnic groups and the news media, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 97. His death was confirmed by his son, David Gans.A refugee from Nazi Germany who became one of the nation\u2019s most influential social critics, Dr. Gans taught at Columbia and other leading universities for 54 years, wrote a dozen books and hundreds of articles and shaped the thinking of government and corporate policymakers, colleagues in sociology and a wide public audience.His writing was a tour of Americana from the postwar years into the new millennium, exploring race relations, economic problems, highbrow and popular cultures, nostalgia for the rural past and a plethora of provocative questions: Why do the poor get poorer and the rich richer? Can Jews and Italians get along in Canarsie? Is landmarks preservation elitist? And what\u2019s to be done about the New York Yankees?He was also a liberal activist, opposing the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration\u2019s efforts to muzzle the press, testifying for the comedian Lenny Bruce in his 1964 obscenity trial, campaigning for the release of imprisoned sociologists in Communist Hungary, and serving as a consultant to antipoverty programs and city planners.When racial riots racked urban America, he drafted part of the Kerner Commission\u2019s 1967 report on the causes, and testified that the uprisings were due, above all, to segregation and unemployment, and that only a national jobs program, desegregation and income-redistribution efforts could solve the crisis.As president of the American Sociological Association in 1988-89, he urged colleagues to get closer to their subjects and to write more intelligibly. Sociological studies had long been academically insular, dense with statistics and scientific jargon. But Dr. Gans set an example by inserting himself into the communities and institutions he studied, becoming what he called a \u201cparticipant-observer,\u201d and writing lucid prose for ordinary readers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26357,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26358,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26355\/revisions\/26358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}