Herbert Gans | Biography

Herbert Gans was born May 7, 1927, in Cologne, Germany. He immigrated to the United States in 1940 and became a naturalized citizen in 1945. From 1945 to 1946, he served in the U.S.Army. In 1957, Gans received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. He married Louise Gruner on March 19,1967.

Throughout his career, Gans has worked for the Chicago Housing Authority as an assistant planner, the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Urban Studies as a professor of city planning and development, and he has been are search associate for the Center for Urban Education, New York City. Gans has as also been a professor of sociology at Columbia University and a professor of sociology and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

Gans is known for his participant-observer sociological studies in which he immerses himself in the life of the community under consideration. Commentator John Goldthorpe finds that Gans's studies often expose social myths. The Urban Villagers: Groups and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans, Gans's study of Boston's West End, is, Goldthorpe feels, "in effect an excellent piece debunking the whole idea of the happy urban peasant. The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Surburban Community, attacks the myth of the suburb, which holds, according to Goldthorpe's summary, that suburbanites are anxious, bored, cultureless social climbers without communal roots. Gans's discovery, remarks Goldthorpe, that "most of the charges made against suburbia simply do not stick.... There are no good reasons for believing that the residents of Levittown are any more conformist, insecure, anxious, status-conscious, bored, etc. than otherwise comparable Americans who are not suburbanites."

Gans continues to contradict common social beliefs in Popular Culture and High Culture, in which, remarks Richard Todd, the author argues that "American culture includes several levels of taste--Gans calls them 'taste cultures'--and that any one of them is as good as any other, because each serves the needs and wants of a particular public." Gansalso opposes policies which would urge that these "taste cultures" be improved and, as Christopher Lehmann-Haupt summarizes, "instead encourages 'more culturalpluralism' by means of 'subcultural programming' (or cultural programs that would appeal to groups that are now excluded by mass culture, like the poor, the old, and the ethnic)."

In Middle American Individualism: The Future of Liberal Democracy, Gans looks at the political and social viewpoints of the middle and working classes. He finds that these people are more interested in the well-being of their immediate circles--which Gans dubs "microsocieties"--than of society as a whole, but contends that this does not mean they are selfish. They want "an egalitarian, humane welfare state that takes care of their needs--low taxes, full employment--as well as the needs of the poor," summarizes Alex Raksin in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Middle Americans' lack of interest in politics, Gans asserts, is the fault of politicians; he recommends that elected officials add staff members to reach out to disinterested or under-represented constituencies.

Gans turns his attention to the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Anti-poverty Policy. He asserts that many of the terms used to describe the poor-- including the term "underclass"--help the rest of society maintain its detachment from the poor. These labels, according to Gans, also facilitate blaming the poor for their condition and interfere with anti-poverty efforts. "Labels may only be words," Gans writes, "but they are judgmental or normative words, which can steer institutions and individuals to punitive action." He calls not only for an end to such labeling, but also for numerous economic reforms aimed at combating poverty. Among the latter is a shorter work week, designed to increase the number of available jobs.