Dorothy Harrell, American baseball player (All-American Girls Professional Baseball League), died she was 87.

Dorothy Harrell  was a shortstop who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5 4", 127 lb., Harrell batted and threw right-handed. After being married she played under the name of Dorothy Doyle.^[1][2]

(February 4, 1924 – September 15, 2011)

An All-Star Team member in five of her eight seasons, Dorothy Harrell was one of the premier shortstops of All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in its twelve years history. Harrell helped bring four championship titles to the Rockford Peaches, including back-to-back victories from 1947 to 1950, while leading her team in runs batted in several times. A classic slap hitter, she rarely tried to drive the ball and was able to put it in play very often, driving in a career 306 runs to rank 13th on the league's all-time list. Well respected for her keen eye for pitches, she garnered 203 walks and strike out only 95 times in 2,920 at-bats for a very solid 2.14 BB/K ratio.^[3]
A native of Los Angeles, California, Dorothy Harrell was knicknamed ″Snookie″ by her grandmother when she was born. She had an interesting bloodline. Her father, William D. Harrell, was of Irish, Scottish and Cherokee heritage, while her mother, Catherine Harrell, was of Welsh and German ancestry. She received encouragement early in her life from her mother, a huge baseball fan, who gave her a baseball glove and a uniform for Christmas when she was five years old. Harrell graduated from John C. Fremont High School and played organized softball in the Los Angeles area before marrying in 1943 to Leonard Isbell. She remained married through 1946.^[4][5][6]
Harrell was discovered in 1944 by Bill Allington, former minor league player and then a coach in the California leagues, who was also an active scout for the All-American League. She attended a tryout and made an immediate impact on Allington and her future Peaches teammates. Allington eventually would be named manager for the team in the summer of that year as a replacement for Jack Kloza.^[7][8]
Entering her first season as the starting shortstop, Harrell was instrumental part of a solid and durable Rockford infield that included Dorothy Kamenshek at first base, Mildred Deegan at second and Alice Pollitt at third. After two losing seasons the Peaches led the circuit with a 67-43 record in 1945. During the playoffs, Rockford beat the Grand Rapids Chicks in the first round, three to one games, and defeated the Fort Wayne Daisies in the best-of-seven series, four to one games, behind a strong pitching effort from Carolyn Morris (3-0) and the opportune hitting of Kamenshek (6-for-21, .285, two RBI).^[9][10]
In 1946 Rockford finished in fourth place (60-52) and disposed of Grand Rapids in the first round, three-to-two games, but lost the finals to the Racine Belles in six games. In the final contest, which ended with a score of 1–0, Morris hurled a no-hitter for nine innings but lost her gem because Rockford failed to score. She was not removed until the bottom of the twelfth inning. On the other hand, Racine ace Joanne Winter won her fourth game of the playoffs (third against Rockford), despite allowing 19 base runners. The scoreless game went into the bottom of fourteen, when Sophie Kurys hit a single off reliever Mildred Deegan; stole second base, and, in the midst of stealing third, saw her teammmate Betty Trezza hit a single to right field. Kurys taged and slid at home plate for the only run of the game.^[11][12]

Dorothy Harrell, acrobatic All-Star shortstop for the Rockford Peaches, one of the top players in AAGPBL history, who served as an inspiration for the 1992 film A League of Their Own. Photo Credit: Bettmann/CORBIS.

Harrell earned her first All-Star selection in 1947. Starting that year, she led her team in runs batted during four consecutive seasons, batting a career-high .271 average in 1950, and joining the All-Star squad from 1948 to 1950. Rockford returned to the playoffs in 1948, to start a string of three straight championships.^[11]
In 1948 Rockford beat Fort Wayne Daisies in the best-of-seven series, four to one games. Helen Nicol won all four playoff games she pitched, including the finale in the championship against Maxine Kline, by a 4–2 score. Throughout the finals Harrell was the best hitter, leading all players with a .432 average (7-for-17).^[11]
In 1949, Harrell married David Doyle and played the rest of her career under her married name, Dorothy Doyle. Her husband died in 1963, and she never remarried.^[2]
Meanwhile, Rockford continued their torrid pace in 1949, sweeping their longtime rival South Bend Blue Sox in the best-of-seven final series. The defending champion Peaches won again in 1950, this time beating Fort Wayne in the maximum seven games. Notably, the Peaches and the Blue Sox were the only original teams to be active through the 12 years of existence of the circuit. South Bend would break the championship run of Rockford in 1951. In 58 postseason games, Dorothy batted an average of .281 (61-for-217) with four doubles, two triples and 15 stolen bases, driving in 21 runs while scoring 18 times.^[11]
In 1951 Dorothy played with the Phoenix A-1 Queens in an Arizona independent league. She rejoined the Peaches in 1952, earning her fifth All-Star berth during what turned out to be her last AAGPBL season. After that she returned to the Queens for the 1953 and 1954 seasons, and also played for the Orange Linoettes fastpitch softball team of California from 1956 to 1960, participating in Major National Tournaments.^[13][14]
Harrell graduated from Long Beach State University in 1958, earning her bachelor's degree after earning an associates degree from El Camino Junior College. Following her baseball retirement, she taught mathematics and worked as counselor and physical education teacher at Compton Unified School District in the Los Angeles area, retiring in 1984 after 26 years of service.^[15]
After retiring, she joined the Golden Diamonds Girls, a group of former AAGPBL players who made frequent appearances at reunions, card shows and sign autographs. She also became an avid golfer and remained close friends with her infield teammates Deegan, Kamenshek and Pollitt.^[16]
Since 1988 Dorothy Harrell Doyle is part of Women in Baseball, a permanent display based at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, which was unveiled to honor the entire All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She is also featured as one of the best shortstops to ever play the game with a 10-foot banner hanging at Safeco Field in Seattle, in between Roberto Clemente and Brooks Robinson banners.^[2]
She was a long time resident of Cathedral City, California, where she died at the age of 87.^[2]

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José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado, Spanish scientist and professor, died he was 96.

José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado was a Spanish professor of physiology at Yale University, famed for his research into mind control through electrical stimulation of regions in the brain  died he was 96.

(August 8, 1915 – September 15, 2011) 

Biography

Delgado was born in Ronda, a province of Málaga, Spain in 1915. He received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Madrid just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. During the Spanish Civil War he served as a medical corpsman on the Republican side while he was a medical student. Delgado was held in a concentration camp for five months after the war ended.^[2] After serving in the camp, he had to repeat his M.D. degree, and then took a Ph.D. at the Cajal Institute in Madrid.
Delgado's father was an eye doctor and he had planned to follow in his footsteps. However, once he discovered the writings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal and spent some time in a physiology laboratory, Delgado no longer wanted to be an eye doctor. Delgado became captivated by "the many mysteries of the brain. How little was known then. How little is known now!”^[3]
In 1946 Delgado won a fellowship at Yale University. In 1950, Delgado accepted a position in the physiology department which at the time was headed by John Fulton. By 1952, he had co-authored his first paper on implanting electrodes into humans.^[4]
The Spanish minister of health, Villar Palasi, asked Delgado to help organize a new medical school at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Delgado accepted Palasi's proposal and relocated to Spian with his wife and two children in 1974.^[5]
Delgado had last moved with his wife, Caroline, to San Diego, California before his death on September 15, 2011. ^[6]

Research

Delgado's research interests centered on the use of electrical signals to evoke responses in the brain. His earliest work was with cats, but he later did experiments with monkeys and humans, including mental patients.
Much of Delgado's work was with an invention he called a stimoceiver, a radio which joined a stimulator of brain waves with a receiver which monitored E.E.G. waves and sent them back on separate radio channels. Some of these stimoceivers were as small as half-dollars. This allowed the subject of the experiment full freedom of movement while allowing the experimenter to control the experiment. This was a great improvement from his early equipment which included implanted electrodes whose wires ran from the brain to bulky equipment that both recorded data and delivered the desired electrical charges to the brain. This early equipment, while not allowing for a free range of movement, was also the cause of infection in many subjects.^[7]
The stimoceiver could be used to stimulate emotions and control behavior. According to Delgado, "Radio Stimulation of different points in the amygdala and hippocampus in the four patients produced a variety of effects, including pleasant sensations, elation, deep, thoughtful concentration, odd feelings, super relaxation, colored visions, and other responses." Delgado stated that "brain transmitters can remain in a person's head for life. The energy to activate the brain transmitter is transmitted by way of radio frequencies."^[8]
Using the stimoceiver, Delgado found that he could not only elicit emotions, but he could also elicit specific physical reactions. These specific physical reactions, such as the movement of a limb or the clenching of a fist, were achieved when Delgado stimulated the motor cortex. A human whose implants were stimulated to produce a reaction were unable to resist the reaction and so one patient said “I guess, doctor, that your electricity is stronger than my will”. Some consider one of Delgado's most promising finds is that of an area called the septum within the limbic region. This area, when stimulated by Delgado, produced feelings of strong euphoria. These euphoric feelings were sometimes strong enough to overcome physical pain and depression.^[9]
Delgado created many inventions and was called a “technological wizard” by one of his Yale colleagues. Other than the stimoceiver, Delgado also created a "chemitrode" which was an implantable device that released controlled amounts of a drug into specific brain areas. Delgado also invented an early version of what is now a cardiac pacemaker.^[10]
In Rhode Island, Delgado did some work at what is now a closed mental hospital. He chose patients who were "desperately ill patients whose disorders had resisted all previous treatments" and implanted electrodes in about 25 of them. Most of these patients were either schizophrenics or epileptics. To determine the best placement of electrodes within the human patients, Delgado initially looked to the work of Wilder Penfield, who studied epileptics' brains in the 1930s, as well as earlier animal experiments, and studies of brain-damaged people.^[11]
The most famous example of the stimoceiver in action occurred at a Cordoba bull breeding ranch. Delgado stepped into the ring with a bull which had had a stimoceiver implanted within its brain. The bull charged Delgado, who pressed a remote control button which caused the bull to stop its charge. The region of the brain Delgado stimulated when he pressed the handheld transmitter was the caudate nucleus. This region was chosen to be stimulated because the caudate nucleus is involved in controlling voluntary movements.^[12] Delgado claimed that the stimulus caused the bull to lose its aggressive instinct.
Although the bull incident was widely mentioned in the popular media, Delgado believed that his experiment with a female chimpanzee named Paddy was more significant. Paddy was fitted with a stimoceiver linked to a computer that detected the brain signal called a spindle which was emitted by her part of the brain called the amygdala. When the spindle was recognized, the stimoceiver sent a signal to the central gray area of Paddy's brain, producing an 'aversive reaction'. In this case, the aversive reaction was an unpleasant or painful feeling. The result of the aversive reaction to the stimulus was a negative feedback to the brain.^[13] Within hours her brain was producing fewer spindles as a result of the negative feedback.^[14] As a result, Paddy became “quieter, less attentive and less motivated during behavioral testing”. Although Paddy's reaction was not exactly ideal, Delgado hypothesized that the method used on Paddy could be used on others to stop panic attacks, seizures, and other disorders controlled by certain signals within the brain.^[15]

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Frances Bay, Canadian character actress (Happy Gilmore, Blue Velvet, The Middle), died she was 92.

Frances Bay was a U.S.-based Canadian character actress, best known for playing quirky, elderly women on film and television  died she was 92. She began her acting career in her mid-50s.

(January 23, 1919^[2] – September 15, 2011)^[3] 

Personal life

Bay was born Frances Goffman in Mannville, Alberta to a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant father, Max Goffman, and his wife, Ann (née Averbach), and raised in Dauphin, Manitoba. Her younger brother was the noted sociologist Erving Goffman. Before World War II she acted professionally in Winnipeg and spent the war hosting the Canadian Broadcasting Company's radio show, Everybody's Program, aimed at service members overseas.^[4]
She married and moved to Cape Town, South Africa, living in the Constantia and Camps Bay areas. She studied with Uta Hagen at this time.^[5] Charles and Frances Bay had one son, Josh (Eli Joshua; 14 March 1947 – 6 June 1970)^[6], who died at the age of 23. Soon after the death of her husband in 2002, she was struck by a car in Glendale, California, and as a result she had to have part of her right leg amputated.^[7]
She was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame on September 6, 2008, in large part thanks to a petition with 10,000 names which was submitted on her behalf. The selection committee also received personal letters from Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld, David Lynch, Henry Winkler, Monty Hall and other celebrities.^[8][9]

Early roles

Bay did not appear in films until she got a small part in Foul Play, a 1978 comedy starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. A year earlier, she appeared as Mrs. Hamilton in the Christmas television special Christmastime with Mister Rogers. She went on to play small roles in films like The Karate Kid, Big Top Pee-wee and Twins.
Her first major television appearance occurred playing the grandmother to the character of Arthur Fonzarelli (aka "The Fonz") on Happy Days. She described Henry Winkler (who played Fonzarelli) as "just a sweet guy. He lost his own grandmother in the Holocaust, and he wrote me a letter saying I was his virtual grandmother".^[10] In 1983, she played the grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood in Faerie Tale Theatre for Showtime. In 1994, she played Mrs. Pickman in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness.

Work with David Lynch

In 1986, Bay appeared as the doddery aunt of Kyle MacLachlan's character in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. This role seems to have endeared the actress to Lynch, who recast her in several subsequent works, including as a foul-mouthed madam in Wild at Heart, and as Mrs. Tremond on Twin Peaks and its movie spin-off, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

Other roles

She may be best-remembered for her performance as the loving grandmother of Adam Sandler's titular character in the 1996 film Happy Gilmore. Bay is also familiar from her performance in the music video for Jimmy Fallon's comedy song "Idiot Boyfriend". She made an appearance as Mrs. Pickman in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness.

Television

She has the distinction of appearing in the final episodes of three long-running sitcom series: Happy Days, Who's the Boss? and Seinfeld. Bay had the opportunity to play Cousin Winifred in the fourth to last episode of Road to Avonlea, for which she won a Gemini Award.

Notable television appearances

• In a The Dukes of Hazzard episode, "The Return of Hughie Hogg", Bay played Hortense Coltrane, Boss Hogg's sister-in-law, the previously unmentioned sister of Lulu Coltrane Hogg and Rosco P. Coltrane.
• In episode 19 ("The Gift") of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, Bay played a dying woman, Mildred Grayson, who has been abandoned by her daughters.
• In the Seinfeld episode "The Rye", she played Mabel Choate, an irritable old woman from whom Jerry steals a loaf of marbled rye bread. She guest-starred with her former Twin Peaks co-stars Grace Zabriskie and Warren Frost, although she did not share scenes with them. Following a story arc, she then appeared in a later episode, "The Cadillac". She recognized Jerry as the thief, and cast the deciding vote to impeach Jerry's father as president of his condo community. She also appeared in the final episode to recount the incident.
• In the episode "Excelsis Dei" of The X-Files, Bay played Dorothy, a resident of the nursing home who could see the spirits that had been awakened.
• She appeared in an episode of Charmed as an older version of the character Phoebe Halliwell.
• She appeared in an episode of Grey's Anatomy in 2009 as an elderly patient who "just wouldn't die".
• Her last part was a recurring role as the silent Aunt Ginny on The Middle. The episode "The Map" was dedicated to her.

Death

Bay died in Tarzana, California on September 15, 2011, of complications from pneumonia, aged 92.^[11]

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Malcolm Wallop, American politician, United States Senator from Wyoming (1977–1995), died he was 78.

Malcolm Wallop was a Republican politician and former three-term United States Senator from Wyoming  died he was 78..

(February 27, 1933 – September 14, 2011^[1]) 

Early years

Wallop was born in New York City, graduated from the Cate School in Santa Barbara, California, and attended Yale University, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall. His roots in Wyoming stemmed back to pioneer ancestors in Big Horn.^{[citation needed]} After his graduation from Yale in 1954, Wallop served in the U.S. Army as a first lieutenant from 1955 to 1957. He worked for a decade as a cattle rancher and small businessman, having entered politics in 1969 as a successful candidate for the Wyoming House of Representatives. He served two terms, followed by a stint in the Wyoming State Senate from 1973 to 1976. In 1974, Wallop sought the Republican gubernatorial nomination but was defeated by Richard R. "Dick" Jones, a trucking executive from Cody and Powell in Park County in northwestern Wyoming. Jones went on to lose the general election in a heavily Democratic year to Edgar Herschler of Kemmerer in Lincoln County in southwestern Wyoming.
In 1976, in another nationally Democratic year, Wallop unseated three-term Democratic U.S. Senator Gale W. McGee by a margin of nearly 10 points in a rare bright spot for Republicans that year.

Marriages

Wallop was married four times:^[2]

• Vail Stebbins (1956–65; divorced); (three sons and one daughter)
• Judith Warren (1967–1981; divorced)
• French Carter Gamble Goodwyn (1984–2001)
• Isabel Thompson (2005–2011)

Senate service

In his first term, Wallop authored the legislation that established the Congressional Award program to recognize outstanding volunteerism among America's youth. The 1977 Wallop Amendment to the Surface Mining Control Act was hailed by property rights advocates for forcing the federal government to compensate property owners whose ability to mine was undercut by regulation. Three years later, Wallop successfully amended the Clean Water Act to protect states' interests.^{[citation needed]}
His bill to cut inheritance and gift taxes in 1981 was a key component of President Ronald Reagan's tax reform package and is remembered as one of the most substantive changes to tax policy that decade. Four years earlier, Wallop was partially responsible for phasing out President Jimmy Carter's Windfall Profits Tax. In 1982, he was re-elected by a 14-point margin over Democrat Rodger McDaniel, a Wyoming state legislator. Six years later, Wallop won his final term by earning just 1,322 more votes than another state senator, Democrat John Vinich.^{[citation needed]}
Wallop's later career was characterized largely by his participation in the foreign policy and trade debates of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was a member of the Helsinki Commission and travelled extensively in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as an arms control negotiator. Wallop was also a strong advocate of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and U.S. participation in the World Trade Organization. From 1990-94, he was the top Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. In 1992, Wallop was a key force behind passage of the far-reaching Energy Policy Act.^{[citation needed]}
In 1994, Wallop opted out of a race for a fourth term. He was succeeded by Republican Craig Thomas.

Post-senate career

Immediately upon his retirement from the Senate in January 1995, Wallop founded the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a Virginia-based non-profit group that lobbies for constitutionally limited government and a strong national defense.^[3] George Landrith is the current president of the Institute, a position he has held since 1998. One of the Institute's early staffers was Myron Ebell.^[4]
In 1996, Wallop served as General Chairman of the Steve Forbes presidential campaign.^[3] Wallop died after a protracted period of illness in Big Horn, Wyoming. He was 78.

Aristocratic connections

Malcolm Wallop was the second son of Jean Wallop and the Hon. Oliver Malcolm Wallop, son of Rt. Hon. Oliver Henry Wallop, 8th Earl of Portsmouth, making him a first cousin, once removed, of the current Earl of Portsmouth.^[5] As a result he was in remainder to the Earldom and subsidiary titles. His sister, Jean, is the current dowager Countess of Carnarvon, having married Henry Herbert, 7th Earl of Carnarvon in 1956; he was Queen Elizabeth II's horse racing manager.^[6] Senator Wallop was therefore an uncle of the current Earl of Carnarvon. Among his cousins are the present Earl Cadogan and the Marquess of Abergavenny.^[7]

Works by Malcolm Wallop

Wallop, Malcolm. "The Environment: Air, Water & Public Lands," In A Changing America: Conservatives View the 80s from the United States Senate, edited by Paul Laxalt and Richard S. Williamson, pp. 133–56. South Bend, Ind.: Regnery/Gateway, 1980.
Wallop, Malcolm, and Angelo Codevilla. The Arms Control Delusion. San Francisco: ICS Press, 1987.

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Buddy Tinsley, American-born Canadian football player (Winnipeg Blue), died he was 87.

Robert Porter "Buddy" Tinsley was a Canadian Football League offensive lineman for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. died he was  87. He was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1982, and was a member of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Hall of Fame, the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame and the Baylor University Hall of Fame.

(August 16, 1924 – September 14, 2011)

Tinsley died on September 14, 2011, aged 87, from undisclosed causes, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.





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Rudolf Mössbauer, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (1961), died he was 82.

Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer was a German physicist best known for his 1957 discovery of recoilless nuclear resonance fluorescence for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics  died he was  82.. This effect, called the Mössbauer effect, is the basis for Mössbauer spectroscopy.^[2]

(January 31, 1929 – September 14, 2011^[1]) 

Career

Mössbauer was born in Munich, where he also studied physics at the Technical University of Munich. He prepared his Diplom thesis in the Laboratory of Applied Physics of Heinz Maier-Leibnitz and graduated in 1955. He then went to the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. Since this institute, not being part of a university, had no right to award a doctorate, Mössbauer remained under the auspices of Maier-Leibnitz who was his official thesis advisor when he passed his PhD exam in Munich in 1958.
In his PhD work, he discovered recoilless nuclear fluorescence of gamma rays in 191 iridium, the Mössbauer effect. His fame grew immensely in 1960 when Robert Pound and Glen Rebka used this effect to prove the red shift of gamma radiation in the gravitational field of the earth; this Pound–Rebka experiment was one of the first experimental precision tests of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. The long-term importance of the Mössbauer effect, however, is its use in Mössbauer spectroscopy. Along with Robert Hofstadter, Rudolf Mössbauer was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics.
On suggestion of Richard Feynman, Mössbauer was invited in 1960 to Caltech, where he advanced rapidly from Research Fellow to Senior Research Fellow; he was appointed full professor of physics in early 1962. In 1964, his alma mater, the Technical University of Munich (TUM), convinced him to come back as full professor. He retained this position until he became professor emeritus in 1997. As a condition for his return, the faculty of physics introduced a "department" system. This system, strongly influenced by Mössbauer's American experience, was in radical contrast to the traditional, hierarchical "faculty" systems of German universities, and it gave the TUM an eminent position in German physics.
In 1972, Rudolf Mössbauer went to Grenoble to succeed Heinz Maier-Leibnitz as director of the Institut Laue-Langevin, just when its newly built high-flux research reactor went into operation. After serving a 5 years term, Mössbauer returned to Munich, where he found his institutional reforms reversed by overarching legislation; till the end of his career he often expressed bitterness over this "destruction of the department". His research interests shifted to neutrino physics.
Rudolf Mössbauer was an excellent teacher. Highly specialized lectures were given by him on numerous courses including Neutrino Physics, Neutrino Oscillations, The Unification of the Electromagnetic and Weak Interaction and The Interaction of Photons and Neutrons With Matter. In 1984 he taught undergraduate lectures to the 350 people taking the physics course. He told his students: “Explain it! The most important thing is, that you are able to explain it! You will have exams, there you have to explain it. Eventually, you pass them, you get your diploma and you think, that's it! – No, the whole life is an exam, you'll have to write applications, you'll have to discuss with peers... So learn to explain it! You can train this by explaining to another student, a colleague. If they are not available, explain it to your mother – or to your cat!”

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Frank Parkin, British sociologist and novelist, died he was 80.

Dr. Frank Parkin was a British sociologist and novelist  died he was 80.. He was a professor emeritus at the University of Kent and editor of the Concepts in the Social Sciences series published by Open University Press.



(26 May 1931 – 14 September 2011) 

Biography

Frank Parkin was born in 1931 in Aberdare, Mid Glamorgan, Wales. He studied at the London School of Economics and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1966. He worked briefly as an assistant lecturer at the University of Hull in 1964 and 1965. By 1974, he was a reader in sociology at the University of Kent.^[3] He later became lecturer in politics and a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.^[4] At some point he left this position.^[5] From the early 1980s and onwards, Parkin wrote little sociology, focusing instead on fiction. Exceptions to this are his book on Durkheim from 1992, and the second edition of his book on Weber in 2002.

Closure theory

In sociology, Frank Parkin is best known for his contribution to the theory of social closure, most fully laid out in his Marxism and class theory: A bourgeois critique. In quite sharp tone, Parkin argues that Marxist theories of social class were marked by fundamental deficiencies, particularly associated with the ambiguous status of their central explanatory concept, mode of production.^[6] He attacks the Marxists' overemphasis on deep levels of structure, at the expense of social actors, and suggests a radical recasting of the theory of class and stratification. He proposes to do this by centering theory around the concept of social closure. Parkin follows Weber in understanding closure as

the process by which social collectives seek to maximize rewards by restricting access to resources and opportunities to a limited circle of eligibles. This entails the singling out of certain social or physical attributes as the justificatory basis of exclusion. Weber suggests that virtually any group attribute - race, language, social origin, religion- may be seized upon provided it can be used for "the monopolization of specific, usually economic opportunities". This monopolization is directed against competitors who share some positive or negative characteristic; its purpose is always the closure of social and economic opportunities to outsiders. The nature of these exclusionary practices, and the completeness of social closure, determine the general character of the distributive system.^[7]

Parkin goes on to elaborate this concept, by identifying two main types, exclusionary and usurpationary closure. 'The distinguishing feature of exclusionary closure is the attempt by one group to secure for itself a privileged position at the expense of some other group through processes of subordination'.^[8] He refers to this metaphorically as the use of power downwards. Usurpationary closure, however, is the use of power upwards, by the groups of subordinates created by the exclusionary closure, aimed at winning a greater share of resources, threatening 'to bite into the privileges of legally defined superiors'.^[9]
Arguably, the most novel aspect of Parkin's contribution was that he wanted to define classes in terms of their closure strategies, as opposed to defining class with reference to some structure of positions. The bourgeoisie could be identified, he held, by their reliance on exclusionary closure, as opposed to, say, their ownership of the means of production. Similarly, a subordinate class would be identified by their reliance on usurpationary closure:

the familiar distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in its classic as well as its modern guise, may be conceived of as an expression of conflict between classes defined not specifically in relation to their place in the productive process but in relation to their prevalent modes of closure, exclusion and usurpation, respectively.^[10]

Writing style

Parkin's works, at least those from the late '70s and onwards, are notable for their lively discursive tone, frequently using sarcasm and irony in driving home their points. This was noted by many reviewers of Marxism and class theory. Dennis Wrong called it a 'bitingly witty and incisive assault on the sociological pretensions of western academic Marxism'.^[11] Guenter Roth remarked: 'This is an unusually well-written essay. Its wit, sense of irony, and elegance of phrase add stylistic power to a trenchant critique of Marxist class theories and to "re- thinking class analysis"...'.^[12] Gavin Mackenzie called it "a beautifully written, savage and supremely witty attack' on Marxism: 'I haven't laughed so much since ethnomethodology'.^[13] Anthony Giddens commented on the 'vivid change in [Parkin's] writing style': While Class inequality and political order(1971) was 'written neutrally and dispassionately', Marxism and class theory was marked by a 'deliberatively provocative tone'. 'Parkin's discussion of contemporary marxist accounts of class is heavily ironic and often openly sarcastic.' Giddens drew particular attention to the first page of the Preface:.^[14]

Lenin's wry comments on the efflorescence of Marxism in Russia at the turn of the century seem quite pertinent to our own time and place:

'Marxist books were published one after another, Marxist jour-nals and newspapers were founded, nearly everyone became a Marxist, Marxists were flattered, Marxists were courted and the book publishers rejoiced at the extraordinary, ready sale of Marxist literature.'

Lenin was not too enthusiastic about a species of Marxism that appeared to be more congenial to the literati than to the class that really mattered. On these grounds alone, it is unlikely that he would have felt very differently about the Marxist products that have been manufactured and marketed in western universities over the past decade or so. Contemporary western Marxism, unlike its classical predecessor, is wholly the creation of academic social theorists - more specifically, the creation of the new professoriate that rose up on the wave of university expansion in the 1960s. The natural constituency of this Marxism is not of course the working class, but the massed ranks of undergraduates and postgraduate students in the social sciences; its content and design mark it out exclusively for use in the lecture theatre, the seminar room, and the doctoral dissertation. Hence the strange and fascinating spectacle to be witnessed in social science faculties throughout western Europe and beyond of diligent bands of research students and their mentors busily combing through the pages of Theories of Surplus Value in search of social reality.^[15]

Parkin continues:

As if to make secure its newly-won respectability, professorial Marxism has, in the manner of all exclusive bodies, carried out its discourse through the medium of an arcane language not readily accessible to the uninstructed. Certainly no-one could possibly accuse the Marxist professoriate of spreading the kind of ideas likely to cause a stampede to the barricades or the picket lines. Indeed, the uncomplicated theory that has traditionally inspired that sort of extra-mural activity is now rather loftily dismissed as 'vulgar' Marxism - literally, the Marxism of the 'common people'. This is not necessarily to suggest that the new breed of Marxists are less dedicated than the old to the revolutionary transformation of society; their presence at the gates of the Winter Palace is perfectly conceivable, provided that satisfactory arrangements could be made for sabbatical leave.^[16]

Parkin's wit was not exclusively reserved for Marxist academics. The passage quoted below follows a sharply critical review of American theories of stratification, particularly their interpretation of Weber:

... one searches these various offerings in vain for any trace of the persistent Weberian concerns with property or state bureaucracy or class antagonisms and structural change; or for any small recognition that for Weber the "dimensions" of stratification were never regarded as aggregates of individual attributes but as "phenomena of the distribution of power." Instead, the American reality portrayed gives every appearance of a society in which property has been liquidated, classes have dissolved, and the state has withered away. It is a sociological portrait of America as drawn by Norman Rockwell for the Saturday Evening Post. One can only surmise whether Weber, if confronted with the knowledge of the things said and written in his name, would take a leaf out of his predecessor's book and declare, "Je ne suis pas Weberien".^[17]

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