Bio: (1916–1994) German-American sociologist. Rose Laub Coser received her Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University in 1957. She lectured at Wellesley College from 1951 to 1959, and after that she become research associate in the psychiatry department of the Harvard Medical School. After leaving Harvard, she was a professor at Northeastern University, the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, Boston College, and Harvard. She was also vice president of the American Sociological Association and one of the founders of the journal Dissent. On some of her works, she collaborated with her husband, sociologist Lewis Coser.

Coser made great contributions to several areas: role theory, anti-Semitism, feminist theory, sociology of gender, sociology of family, and medical sociology. In developing Robert K. Merton’s role theory, Rose Laub Coser highlighted the importance of both ambiguity and multiplicity in social roles. She argued that multiplicity, i.e. situation in which individuals engage in a wider range of roles, allows for greater autonomy, more opportunities, and broader connections to the world beyond their immediate environment. Coser strongly criticized the traditional limitations imposed on women, particularly their confinement within what she termed the “greedy institution” of the family, and supported the emancipatory possibilities of modern public life. In her view, the absence of adequate childcare policies played a key role in maintaining women’s lower social status.

Main works

“A Social Disease,” in Modern Review (1947);

“Anti-Semitism Re-examined,” in The New Leader (1951);

“Political Involvement and Interpersonal Relations,” in Psychiatry (1951);

“A Home Away from Home,” in Social Problems (1956);

“Authority and Decision-Making in a Hospital: A Comparative Analysis,” in American Sociological Review (1958);

“Some Social Functions of Humor,” Human Relations (1959);

“Laughter Among Colleagues: A Study of the Social Functions of Humor Among the Staff of a Mental Hospital,” in Psychiatry (1960);

“Insulation from Observability and Types of Conformity,” in American Sociological Review (1961);

Life in the Ward (1962);

“Time Perspective and the Social Structure,” in Alvin M. Gouldner and Helen P. Gouldner (eds.) Modern Sociology (1963);

“Alienation and the Social Structure.” in Eliot Freidson (ed.) The Hospital in Modern Society (1963);

The Family, Its Structure and Its Functions (1964);

“Role Distance, Sociological Ambivalence and Transitional Status Systems,” in American Journal of Sociology (1966);

“Evasiveness as a Response to Structural Ambivalence,” in Social Science and Medicine (1967);

Life Cycle and Achievement in America (1969);

“On Nepotism and Marginality,” in American Sociologist (1971);

“Women in the Occupational World: Social Disruption and Conflict,” in Social Problems (1971);

“The Principles of Legitimacy and Its Patterned Infringement,” in Marvin B. Sussman and Betty Cogswell (eds) Cross-National Family Research (1972)

“Women’s Liberation: The Real Issues,” in Dissent (1973);

“The Housewife and Her Greedy Family,” in Lewis Coser (ed.) Greedy Institutions (1974);

“Affirmative Action: Letter to a Worried Colleague,” in Dissent (1975);

“Stay Home, Little Sheba: On Placement, Displacement and Social Change,” in Social Problems (1975);

“The Complexity of Roles as a Seedbed of Individual Autonomy.” in The Idea of Social Structure: Papers in Honor of Robert K. Merton (1975);

“Suicide and the Relational System—A Case Study in a Mental Hospital,” in Journal of Health and Social Behavior (1976);

“Why Bother: Are Research Issues of Women’s Health Worthwhile?” in Virginia Olesen (ed.) Women and Their Health: Research Implications for a New Era (1977);

“Pockets of ‘Poverty’ in the Salaries of Academic Women,” in American Association of University Professors Bulletin (1978);

“The Principle of Patriarchy: The Case of the Magic Flute,” in Signs (1978);

“Jonestown as Perverse Utopia,” with Lewis A. Coser, in Dissent (1979);

Training in Ambiguity: Learning Through Doing in a Mental Hospital (1979);

“Where Have All the Women Gone? Like the Sediment of a Good Wine They Have Sunk to the Bottom,” in Cynthia Fuchs Epstein and Rose Laub Coser (eds.) Access to Power: Cross-National Studies of Women and Elites (1981);

Access to Power: Cross-National Studies of Women and Elites (1981).

“On The Reproduction of Mothering: A Methodological Debate,” in .Signs (1981);

“Portrait of a Bolshevik Feminist,” in Dissent (1982);

“The American Family: Changing Patterns of Social Control.” Jack P. Gibbs (ed.) Social Control: Views from the Social Sciences, edited by (1982).

“The Greedy Nature of Gemeinschaft.” in Walter W. Powell and Richard Robbins(eds.) Conflict and Consensus, edited by (1984).

“Cognitive Structure and the Use of Social Space,” in Sociological Forum (1986);

In Defense of Modernity: Complexity of Social Roles and Individual Autonomy (1991).