Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt (September 10, 1923 – September 2, 2010) was an Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i sociologist

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

. In 1959 he was appointed to a teaching post in the sociology department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. From 1990 until his death in September of 2010 he had been a professor emeritus

Emeritus

Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...

. He held countless guest professorships, at among others, the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, the University of Zurich

University of Zurich

The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....

, the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

, the University of Bern, Stanford and the University of Heidelberg. Eisenstadt received a number of prizes, the Balzan prize

Balzan Prize

The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organisations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the brotherhood of man.-Rewards and assets:Each year the...

 and the Max-Planck research prize. He was also the 2006 winner of the Holberg International Memorial Prize

Holberg International Memorial Prize

The Holberg International Memorial Prize was established in 2003 by the government of Norway with the objective of increasing awareness of the value of academic scholarship within the arts, humanities, social sciences, law and theology, either within one of these fields or through interdisciplinary...

. He was a member of many academies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

 and the Advisory Editors Council of the Social Evolution & History

Social Evolution & History

Social Evolution & History is a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on the development of human societies in the past, present and future. In addition to original research articles, Social Evolution & History includes critical notes and a book review section. It is published in English twice a...

 Journal.

In the field of sociology he became known as a "sociologist of youth" ( after a term in From Generation to Generation a work closely related to the ideas of Talcott Parsons

Talcott Parsons

Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1927 to 1973....

.

However:

Eisenstadt's research contributed considerably to the understanding that the modern trend of a eurocentric interpretation of the cultural program developed in the west is a natural development model seen in all societies [...] the European model is only one: it was merely the earliest. It started the trend. But social reactions, whether in the USA, Canada, Japan or in Southeast Asia took place with completely different cultural reagents. (Frankfurter Rundschau, March 22, 2000)

Background and education

His family moved from Central Europe to Poland a few generations before Eisenstadt was born in 1923 in Warsaw, Poland. In the early 1930s Eisenstadt’s widowed mother took him to Jerusalem and he was educated in Palestine from the age of 12. In 1940, Eisenstadt studied at the Hebrew University where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology. After the 1947–48 school year, he went back to Jerusalem to be an assistant lecturer in Martin Buber

Martin Buber

Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....

’s department under whom he had written his master’s thesis. Eisenstadt stayed at the Hebrew University and began teaching there, served as the Chairman of the Department of Sociology from 1950–1969 and also served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities for a few years.

Eisenstadt contributed to the understanding of cultures and civilizations. As a social scientist, “Eisenstadt has focused on the interplay between cultural and structural processes of change and on inherent tensions and antinomies rather than on uniform process of development” Eisenstadt researched broad themes of social change, modernities and civilizations. One of his arguments is that “fundamentalism is not a traditional but a modern phenomenon”.

Eisenstadt summed up his views by saying “I try to understand what was the historical experience of the great civilizations…to try to understand the major dynamics of these civilizations and how they became modern societies, how they modernize and how they develop different cultural programs of modernity”.

In honor of Eisenstadts’s contributions to sociology Erik Cohen, Moshe Lissak, and Uri Almagor compiled the book, Comparative Social Dynamics: Essays in Honor of S.N Eisenstadt. The contributions of this book were written by Eisenstadt’s former students and colleagues at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The articles relate to Eisenstadt’s major themes in the study of cultures, modernization, and social and political change. Eisenstadt’s work touches many different fields of sociology, time periods and cultures and the editors felt the leading concept of Eisenstadt’s work was social dynamics.

Honors

• The McIver Prize of the American Sociological Association in 1964;
• The Rothschild Prize in Social Sciences in 1970;
• The Israel Prize
  Israel Prize
  The Israel Prize is an award handed out by the State of Israel and is largely regarded as the state's highest honor. It is presented annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, in the presence of the President, the Prime Minister, the Knesset chairperson, and the...
  
   in social sciences in 1973;
• The International Balzan Prize im 1988;
• The Max Planck Award for Social Sciences in 1994;
• The Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences in 2001;
• The Humboldt Research Award in 2002;
• The EMET Prize in Sociology in 2005;
• The Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2006 from the Norwegian Parliament. This prize awarded Eisenstadt for outstanding scholarly work in the fields of the arts and humanities, social sciences, law and theology;
• An honorary doctorate from Warsaw University in 2005;
• An Honorary Degree from Harvard University.

Eisenstadt is a member of: Israeli Academy of Sciences, Honorary Foreign Members of the American Philosophical Society, Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences in the U.s., Honorary Foreign Member at the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Honorary Foreign Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 and Political Sciences.

In 2010 a festschrift

Festschrift

In academia, a Festschrift , is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during his or her lifetime. The term, borrowed from German, could be translated as celebration publication or celebratory writing...

, Collective Identities, States and Globalization; Essays in honour of S.N. Eisenstadt was published in Eisenstadt's honor.

Selected works

• The Political System of Empires (1963)
• Modernization, Protest, and Change (1966)
• Revolution and the Transformation of Societies (1978)
• Tradition, Wandel und Modernität (1979)
• Patrons, Clients and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society, with Luis Roniger (1984)
• European Civilization in a Comparative Perspective (1987)
• Die Transformation der israelischen Gesellschaft (1987)
• Kulturen der Achsenzeit (Hrsg.), five volumes (1987 and 1992)
• Japanese Civilization – A Comparative View (1996)
• Die Antinomien der Moderne
• Die Vielfalt der Moderne
• Theorie und Moderne (2006)

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients