Levy, Marion Joseph, Jr.

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LEVY, MARION JOSEPH, JR.

LEVY, MARION JOSEPH, JR. (1918–2002), U.S. sociologist. Born in Galveston, Texas, Levy received a doctorate in sociology from Harvard University. During World War ii he served as a Navy lieutenant in Asia. He was professor of sociology at Princeton University from 1947. His scholarly work was devoted to the study of the family and to the investigation of social and cultural change in the Far East, both within the framework of system analysis, serving for a time as chairman of Princeton's department of East Asian studies. He further formulated the concepts, propositions, and methodological premises of the structural-functional approach to social phenomena in his major work, Structure of Society (1952). He retired in 1989 as Musgrave Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton. His other works include The Family Revolution in Modern China (1949), Rise of the Modern Chinese Business Class (1949), Aspects of the Analysis of Family Structure (1965), Modernization and the Structure of Societies, 2 vols. (1966), Modernization: Latecomers and Survivors (1972), Our Mother-Tempers (1989), and Maternal Influence: The Search for Social Universals (1992).

[Werner J. Cahnman /

Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]