Barrington Moore Jr.

Barrington Moore Jr. (12 May 1913 – 16 October 2005) was an American political sociologist, and the son of forester Barrington Moore. He is famous for his ''Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World'' (1966), a comparative study of [[modernization]] in Britain, France, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and India. His many other works include ''Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery'' (1972) and an analysis of rebellion, ''Injustice: the Social Basis of Obedience and Revolt'' (1978). He graduated from Williams College, Massachusetts, where he received a thorough education in Latin and Greek and in history. He also became interested in political science, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1941, Moore obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from Υale University. He worked as a policy analyst for the government, in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and at the Department of Justice. He met Herbert Marcuse, a lifelong friend, and also his future wife, Elizabeth Ito, at the OSS. His wife died in 1992. They had no children. His academic career began in 1945 at the University of Chicago, in 1948 he went to Harvard University, joining the ''Russian Research Center'' in 1951. He was emerited in 1979. Moore published his first book, ''Soviet Politics'' in 1950 and ''Terror and Progress, USSR'' in 1954. In 1958 his book of six essays on methodology and theory, ''Political Power and Social Theory'', attacked the methodological outlook of 1950s social science. His students at Harvard included comparative social scientists Theda Skocpol, and Charles Tilly.