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Biographical Memoirs Volume 68 (1995) / Chapter Skim
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Hubert Morse Blalock, Jr.
Pages 23-44

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From page 23...
... Hubert Blalock, Sr., was raised by his mother, a widowed schoolteacher in North Carolina. Following completion of his master's degree i In history and a degree in law, the elder Blalock accepted employment in the legal department of the casualty division of the Aetna Casualty and Surety Company of Hartford, Connecticut.
From page 24...
... A1though he could readily master the textbook principles, he found the hands-on applications tedious and uninteresting. He requested a transfer to sea duty and soon found himself assigned as a radio operator on a Landing Ship Tank (I=ST)
From page 25...
... He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 194S, awarclecl the Thayer Mathematics Prize in 1949, anct in the same year was accorded a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics, summa cum laucte. But as a Dartmouth undergracluate he tract also discovered new interests.
From page 26...
... He was a graduate student at Brown who came to Boston about every other weekend to participate in the Quaker workcamp at Peabody House. Ann Bonar and Tad Blalock rapidity cliscoverecl their common values en cl interests.
From page 27...
... he served as an academic counselor for unclergracluate majors and incoming graduate students. Enthusiasm notwithstanding, classroom teaching clicl not come naturally to Instructor Blalock in his first years as a faculty member.
From page 28...
... But, even more, he ctevotec3 aciclitional teaching and consulting time to his students, offering extra sessions and special assistance to those who wanted to take advantage of them. Even in his first years of teaching, TacI showocI eviclence of the kind of concern and the extra time commitment that were to earn for him the high respect of several generations of students.
From page 29...
... His papers on causal inferences built on the founciation laid by Sewell Wright in the development of path analysis four clecades earlier. He also built on structural equation models c3 eveloped by econometricians since the ~ 930s.
From page 30...
... This short book is appropriately seen as an extension of his earlier work on causal inferences. The papers produced during Tad Blalock's period as a North Carolina faculty member were even more influential than his books of that period.
From page 31...
... The importance of these papers lay, not simply in their relevance for status inconsistency theory, as then formulated, but in making the more general point that verbal formulations of theoretical icleas frequently make it clifficult to recognize logical flaws, harking back to one of the points in Theory Construction: From Verbal to Mathematical Formulations. The second set of influential papers published during Tad's period as a faculty member at North Carolina pertainecT to conceptualization ant!
From page 32...
... In 1973 Tad received the Stouffer Award, presented by the American Sociological Association in recognition of his outstanding contributions to sociological research anc!
From page 33...
... enhancing the standing of sociological research as a basis for social action anc} public policy decisions. ~ Unclergracluate teaching en cl the improved training of sociologists were matters of persistent concern to Tact.
From page 34...
... theory were primarily means to make the field more relevant to action en cl policy problems. The social conscience that Tacl clevelopect as a very young man and that was nurtured by the workshops of the American Friends Service Committee ant!
From page 35...
... But his straightforwarcl style, his questioning attitude, his strong commitment to fairness, and his fervent defense of scholarly values gave him an enthusiastic following among the faculty. Even as he was heavily engaged in the activities of the University of Washington Faculty Senate, his commitment to teaching dill not falter and his scholarly productivity (lid not decline.
From page 36...
... A longtime student of race relations, TacI had, of course, also been a student of social conflict and the exercise of power as exemplified in race relations. In Power and Conflict Processes: Toward a General Theory, Tad no longer focuses specifically on race relations; rather, he examines power and conflict more abstractly, considering the relevant processes in all contexts, including, but not limited to, the
From page 37...
... They embocly his persistent conviction that sociology must develop systematic and general theoretical formulations with clear links to the empirical worIcI. They illustrate his belief that common explanations for social phenomena are overly simplistic and hence lack the capacity to advance unclerstanc3ing.
From page 38...
... Her assistance has greatly enriched this memoir and eased the task of writing it. Tad's own partial biographical sketch, titled "Socialization to Sociology by Culture Shock," was a helpful resource more often than one might infer from the explicit citations to it.
From page 39...
... Footnotes 7 (august 1979~:1, 10, 14. (Published by the American Sociological Association, Washington, D.C.
From page 40...
... 69:53-62. 1964 Causal Inferences in Nonexperimental Research.
From page 41...
... Englewood Cliffs, N.~.: Prentice-Hall. 1970 Estimating measurement error using multiple indicators and several points in time.
From page 42...
... The real and unreahzed conthhutions of quantkadve sociology.4~.


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