Christian Heath

Review essay:
Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897-1983):
a note on his approach and influence*

On 5 January 1983 Everett Hughes died in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

aged 86. His death followed a long and distinguished career both as a
writer and teacher, in which he had a profound infiuence on the
development of sociology. His thought and work gave rise to particular
forms of sociological inquiry and pervade a number of substantive
domains within the discipline. Although not a medical sociologist,
Hughes perhaps more than anyone else is responsible for placing medi-
cine and health care on the sociological agenda and his approach con-
tinues to inform the study of health and illness. Despite his infiuence,
Hughes's own work remains relatively unknown amongst social scien-
tists and our familiarity with his thought and ideas derives largely
through the many empirical studies of his students, colleagues and
associates.
Perhaps the most infiuential parts of Hughes's work, certainly within
the sociology of health and illness, are his numerous essays conceming
work and occupations. These include such classics as 'The making of
the physician', 'Licence and mandate', 'Professions in transition', 'Work
and the self and 'Mistakes at work'; papers collected in his book Men
and Their Work (1958) and more recently in the larger collection The
Sociological Eye (1971). It is these essays and the accompanying
lectures by Hughes at the University of Chicago which gave rise to the
empirical beginnings of the sociology of work and occupations; the
numerous studies commonly brought under the rubric of the post-war
'Chicago School'. Many of these studies address issues and topics re-
lated to health and illness and involve empirical investigations of
medical work, organisations and the professions in medicine. Through
his teaching and writing Hughes initiated some of the finest empirical
work within medical sociology and thereby influenced successive
generations of sociologists.
It would be wrong, however, to think of Hughes as solely concemed
with the sociology of work and occupations; his essays and books cover
other topics and fields within social science. A brief glance at the

Sociology of Health and Illness Vol. 6 No. 2 1984

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 Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897-1983) 219
bibliography' provided at the end of this essay reveals the wealth of his
scholarship and the diversity of his thought and work. Hughes has made
significant contdbutions to various domains within social science. For
example, his research and publications on race relations and in par-
ticular French Canada in Transition (1943) and Where Peoples Meet:
Racial and Ethnic Frontiers (1952) with Helen MacGill Hughes are
widely considered classics within the field. Or consider his important
wdtings on such diverse topics as problems in urban planning, pre-war
Germany, education, nursing, public librades, research methods, the
writings of classic sociologists and the academic mind. Hughes was
never tied to a particular substantive field and throughout his career
drew freely from a diverse range of academic and empirical domains.
He provides an approach to sociological inquiry rather than a sociology
of a particular substantive field.
Hughes was born in 1897 in southern Ohio, the son of a methodist
episcopal minister. We are told^ that his father's 'freedom of thought
and scepticism' and Hughes's marginal position as the son of a preacher
played an important part in his development as a scholar. After gradu-
ating at the Ohio Wesleyan University, he undertook a vadety of jobs"
before entedng graduate school in the Department of Anthropology
and Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1923. It is here, Hughes
tells us (1971), that he received his first significant education in socio-
logy and it is within the environment of the University and the city of
Chicago that we can glean some clues to the development of his
thought and work.
The young Hughes entered a department which included such names
as Albion Small, Ernest Burgess and Robert Park, though by the time
Hughes arrived W.I. Thomas had been replaced by Ellsworth Fads. It
was a department which, over a number of years, had developed a
collective interest in analysing the social organisation of the city and
urban life; and along with historians, political scientists, economists
and geographers, a collection of sociologists generated some of the most
fascinating studies of the century. It was Robert Park who was the
natural 'though never the official leader of the group' (Hughes, 1964
and 1971) and it was Park who perhaps more than anyone else in the
department influenced Hughes's thought. Park supervised Hughes's
dissertation The Growth of an Institution: The Chicago Real Estate
Board (1928) and in a vadety of other ways had a hand in Hughes's
formation as a sociologist both in Chicago and in later pre-war years
when Hughes was at McGill University, Canada.
Park and his colleagues introduced Hughes into several distinct and
seemingly unrelated intellectual traditions; traditions from which
Hughes freely draws in developing his own unique form of sociological
220 Christian Heath
inquiry. For example, underpinning the sociology of Hughes is an
essential concem with social aspects of the self and the situational
structure of understanding and perception, concems perhaps developed
by Hughes as a consequence of his familiarity with the relatively recent
emergence of pragmatist philosophy. Park had been a student of John
Dewey at Michigan and later William James at Harvard.* In contrast,
Hughes also mentions the significance of a very different tradition on
his own work, the large-scale social surveys first conducted in the UK
by Charles Booth and Helen Bosanquet and then later in the USA under
the rubric of the 'Pittsburgh Survey'. Methodologically Hughes follows
elements of the approach found within these studies, especially their
dedication to field work and telling it how it is 'fully, freely and bitterly'.
Within sociology and social psychology, Hughes drew from a variety
of sources including the classics such as Durkheim and Weber^ and less
familiar scholars such as Gabriel Tarde. Yet it is the sociology of George
Simmel which perhaps had the most profound influence on Hughes's
thought and work and which in later years permeated some of the
studies of his students, especially Erving Goffman. Again, Hughes
apparently leamed of the importance of Simmel's work through Park
who had encountered Simmel in Berlin in 1899 and was immensely
impressed by his sociological analysis. (Note for example, the number
of selected readings of Simmel compared to Durkheim and Weber in
Introduction to the Science of Sociology, edited by Park and Burgess.)
In keeping with Simmel, we find that Hughes treats the forms and
nature of social interaction as a primary concern of sociology. Conse-
quently, Hughes comprehends identity and understanding, institutional
and cultural forms as deriving from and embodied in social interaction.
Both the perspective and phenomena found within the work of Hughes
reveal a strong Simmelian influence.

The subject matter of sociology is interaction. Conversation of verbal and other

gestures is an almost constant activity of human beings. The main business of
sociology is to gain systematic knowledge of social rhetoric (1956b; 1971,
p. 508).

It is interesting to note that, in discussing the work of Gabriel Tarde,

Hughes himself selects the following quote as one of Tarde's more
significant statements:
If, among the actions from which opinion results, one seeks the most general
and constant, one perceives easily that it is this elementary social relation,
conversation, which has been most completely ignored by sociologists (Tarde,
1902,1, p. 76, quoted in Hughes, 1961; 1971, p. 562).

and continues by suggesting:

 Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897-1983) 221
he is, among pioneer sociologists, the one who thought of communication,
of the influencing of minds by each other, as the central object of study and
who worked out a set of basic concepts and problems to that end (1961; 1971,
p. 562).
In 1927 Hughes left Chicago to join the newly formed department of
sociology at McGill University, Montreal. The department then con-
sisted of two people, Carl Dawson, a Canadian sociologist who had
recently begun a study of the growth and change of a number of
communities in the Western Prairies, and Hughes fresh out of Chicago
and graduate school. However, even before arriving at McGill, Hughes
was developing an interest in relations between the French and English
communities in Montreal and, of course, brought a familiarity with
research conducted in the United States on the assimilation of Euro-
pean ethnic groups to North American communities. The interests of
Dawson and Hughes complemented each other and within a few years
they had attracted funds from the Rockefeller Foundation, through
McGill University, to support research concerned with ethnic relations
and employment in Canada. It was from these beginnings that the
French Canada Project at McGill began, developing over twenty-five
years as it attracted further funds and scholars.'
Besides his involvement in research projects within the French
Canadian programme, Hughes was also engaged in a number of specific
studies himself. These were broadly concemed with industrial develop-
ment and ethnic relations, though ranging from problems of planning
in Quebec through to the industrial revolution and the Catholic move-
ment in Germany.'^ Perhaps the best known of Hughes's works during
this period is the study he conducted with his wife Helen MacGill
Hughes of a small industrial city in the province of Quebec reported in
French Canada in Transition. The study was based on an extensive
period of field work conducted by Everett and Helen Hughes and at
one level is a fine piece of ethnography, with a fiavour not dissimilar
to Wylie's Village in the Vaucluse, depicting the social and economic
life of a particular city. This framework serves as a backdrop for a
deeper analysis of the emergent forms of relation between the English
and French communities, an analysis which delicately reveals some of
the reasons which lie behind the tensions which inform interaction
between the two communities.
Hughes's interest in race relations remained with him throughout his
career and he continued to write essays concemed with a variety of
aspects related to the general area. Some of these expand upon his
original observations, making comparisons with respect to a variety of
emergent problems; others examine new areas and explore rather
222 Christian Heath
different issues from those with which he was originally concemed
(1946, 1947, 1948, 1955c, 1963e, etc.). Some of these essays are
collected in Where Peoples Meet: Racial and Ethnic Frontiers and in
The Sociological Eye. Hughes also edited a collection with Edgar
Thompson entitled: Race, Individual and Collective Behaviour (1958).
Throughout his work within race relations,* Hughes's concem is with
the interaction between the members of different ethnic communities,
its recurring form and its many variations (1943, 1952, 1971). As with
his studies within other substantive fields he finds tension and conflict
in interaction a particularly fruitful source of sociological data and
insight.'
In 1938 Hughes left McGill and retumed to the University of
Chicago, joining the staff in the Department of Sociology. On arriving
in Chicago, Hughes was given two main courses to teach, one of which
was a first-year introductory course in sociology. Within a short time,
Hughes changed its focus, and turned it into an introduction to field
work. Within the course students were encouraged to conduct small-
scale empirical exercises:
Each student, alone or with another, made a series of observations in a Census
Tract or other small area of Chicago outside his everyday experience and
reported on these observations almost week by week. We discussed the
problems the students met in the field. They were asked to notice especially
whom they were taken for by people in the areas where they studied and to
find an explanation for the particular roles attributed to them. When they
had done the several assigned kinds of observation, they were asked to draw
up a proposal for a study which might be done in such an area, by a person
of small resources (1971, p. 498).

As a consequence, nearly all the students in sociology and many in

anthropology at the University of Chicago, went through the ex-
perience of field work. For Hughes the significance of training in field
work was not only that it provides students with a research method,
one amongst a variety of techniques for gathering unstructured data.
Its value also lay in the general training it gives to the sociologist in
observing the everyday world and recognising the importance of seem-
ingly everyday interactions to the study of cultural and social insti-
tutions. Field work provides students with the opportunity of em-
bedding abstract sociological theory and distant empirical studies in
their own everyday observations; a way of tying the 'big sociological
problems' to the ordinary social interaction in which they lie.
Though emphasising the importance of field work to both research
and training in sociology, Hughes remained methodologically eclectic. In
his own research such as the French Canada Projects or the collaborative
 Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897.-1983) 223
studies of work and occupations Hughes utilised a range of methodo-
logies, developing insight into particular problems with whatever tools
might be useful. And, in his essays, Hughes frequently advocates the use
of field methods in conjunction with other research techniques such as
the large-scale social survey, a la Charles Booth and Helen Bosanquet.
Despite this methodological eclecticism Hughes insisted that a great
deal of sociological research would benefit if the researcher were to
spend even a short time in the field. As far as his own work was con-
cerned, in discussing the joint project he conducted with Buford
Junker*" into field work, he wrote —

How did I ever come to initiate such a project? Certainly not because I ever
found field observation easy to undertake. Once I start, I am, 1 believe, not bad
at it. But it has always been a torture. Documents are so much easier to
approach: one simply blows the dust off them, opens them up, and may have
the pleasure of seeing words and thoughts on which no eye has been set these
many years. Yet, in every project I have undertaken, studying the real estate
men, the Catholic labor movement in the Rhineland, and newly industrialized
towns in Quebec, the time came when I had to desert statistical reports and
documents and fare forth to see for myself. It was then that the real learning
began, although the knowledge obtained in advance was very useful; in fact,
it often made possible the conversations which opened the field (1971, p. 497).

However uncomfortable Hughes found field work he had an almost

Dickensian concern with observing and noting the details of everyday
life." Whether it was a trip to Japan or a visit to the corner garage to
have his car fixed Hughes would be keen to discover and record an
array of background information concerning the interaction and events
in question. In his paper 'Teaching as field work' (1969; 1971), Hughes
discussed how the teacher can learn from his students, especially by en-
couraging them to write papers about their own backgrounds, occu-
pations, experiences and the like. Just as Hughes drew particular con-
cems from various traditions and criss-crosses substantive domains, so
he gathered observations wherever he could and from whatever looked
fruitful. And, through his emphasis on field work and everyday obser-
vation in sociological enquiry Hughes not only trained generations of
sociologists but, as his essays and studies reveal, became a master at the
sociological enterprise himself.
The other main course for which Hughes was responsible at the Uni-
versity of Chicago was the Sociology of the Professions, a title he soon
changed to the Sociology of Work and Occupations. The course became
an interdisciplinary forum for both staff and students concerned with
the study of work, organisations and industry. '^ It is here, within this
course, that we find the empirical beginnings of the sociology of work
224 Christian Heath
and occupations, the army of studies which emerged from the University
of Chicago for more than a decade following the Second World War. As
with his courses in methods, students were encouraged to conduct
small-scale empirical exercises or to write papers on matters with which
they were relatively familiar:
A good many students wrote papers on the occupations of their fathers, their
kin, and even on their own. Some of the papers were developed into more
systematic studies and were presented as theses. The occupations considered
included — 1 write them down as they come to me — janitors, junk dealers
(and how they come to engage in the recovery industry), furriers, funeral
directors, taxi drivers, rabbis, school teachers, jazz musicians, mental hospital
attendants, osteopaths, city managers, pharmacists, and YMCA secretaries.
Others studied lawyers, physicians, and the clergy, as well as the newer pro-
fessions or the newer specialities in these older professions (1970; 1971, p. 419).

In this fashion the course focussed on the analysis of actual empirical

materials gathered across a range of settings and occupations. In
addressing these empirical materials, Hughes developed a framework of
theories and concepts with which to explore and depict the social
organisation of work and occupations. Hughes suggests that the aims of
his approach to the study of work and occupations were
to penetrate more deeply into the personal and social drama of work, to under-
stand the social and social-mythological arrangements and desires by which men
make their work tolerable and even glorious to themselves and others. (1958,
p. 48).

to discover pattertis of interaction and mechanisms of control, the things over

which people in a line of work seek to gain control, the sanctions which they
have or would Uke to have at their disposal, and the bargains which were made
— consciously or less consciously — among a group of workers and between
them and the other kinds of people in the drama of their work (1970; 1971,
p. 420).
It's the framework of concepts and themes developed by Hughes,
coupled with an emphasis on field work, which is critical to the emer-
gence of empirical studies on work and occupations and thereby the
sociology of health and illness. The theories and concepts developed by
Hughes, his approach to the analysis of work and occupations, were
originally disseminated through his teaching a paper he wrote entitled:
'An Outline for the Sociological Study of an Occupation"' and the
numerous essays he wrote now collected in the two books mentioned
earlier; The Sociological Eye (especially part II) and Men and Their
Work. For many readers, Hughes's framework of theories and concepts
will be eminently familiar not necessarily as a result of reading through
 Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897-^1983) 225
his numerous essays but rather due to their knowledge of the work of
his students, colleagues and associates. The work of such scholars as
Becker, Dalton, Davis, Geer, Goffman, Gold, Gusfield, Habenstein,
Reiss, Solomon, Strauss, Whyte, to name a few, all bear evidence of
Hughes's influence.
There is neither the space nor the warrant here to discuss in detail
the approach developed by Hughes, but it is perhaps worth mentioning
a few of the ideas and concepts he uses to explore and depict work and
occupations. Hughes's framework is concemed to address the relation-
ship between work and a person's identity and self, and the ways in
which occupations develop a rhetoric loaded with prestige and status
through which members perceive themselves and others. This concept
of self and identity is essentially social and flexible, transforming
through time and in interaction with others. The construction of a self
conception and image of identity is an emergent process within an
occupation and organisation. It involves standardized shifts in per-
spective and understanding, a career or status passage which entails
regular stages and rites de passage.
Hughes developed the concept of career within the framework of an
occupational culture and the forms of occupational socialization
through which neophytes pass. The occupational culture provides
routine practices and sets of collective representations, bundles of
definitions and understandings concerning the nature of the work and
its performance. An essential part of occupational culture is its relation-
ship to mistakes and contingencies which arise within the perfonnance
of work and the ways in which occupational members handle emer-
gencies and develop routines. Moreover, occupational cultures embody
offices and roles which inform not only the duties and privileges of
occupational personnel but the very ways in which they define situ-
ations and perceive themselves and others. A person's work is central
to their conception of self and others and this arises in interaction
with both occupational personnel and the 'outside' world.
These theories and concepts are developed with reference to a wide
variety of everyday observations and data drawn from his own studies
and those of his students. Hughes's perspective on work and occupations
is essentially comparative, allowing the researcher to discem common
dimensions and peculiarities within the performance of work across a
variety of occupations and settings. In fact Hughes's sociological
imagination is at its finest when it illustrates common themes within
the most diverse occupations. Consider, for example, his discussion of
the way in which many occupations have to manage dirty and dis-
concerting aspects of their work whilst maintaining a 'reasonable'
self-conception, an argument he then uses to discuss how certain Nazis
226 Christian Heath

were able to conduct the most appalling tasks in the Second World War.
In teaching we are told that Hughes would continually recommend
students to find the way in which common issues and problems general
to all forms of work turned up in their favoured occupation of study.
Through this comparative approach and his analytic framework, Hughes
was able to throw into relief the substantive details of work and
interaction.
Perhaps the best known and most infiuential of Hughes's essays on
work and occupation, at least amongst medical sociologists, are his dis-
cussions of the professions and in particular the professions of medicine.
It is here that Hughes develops his classic statement conceming the
licence and mandate of the medical profession:
Not merely do the practitioners, by virtue of gaining admission to the charmed
circle of colleagues, individually exercise the licence to do things others do not
do, but collectively they presume to tell society what is good and right for the
individual and for society at large in some aspect of life. Indeed, they set the
very terms in which people may think about this aspect of life. The medical
profession, for instance, is not content merely to define the terms of medical
practice. It also tries to define for all of us the very nature of health and
disease. When the presumption of a group to a broad mandate of this kind is
exphcitly or implicitly granted as legitimate, a profession has come into being.

Yet, as with other theories he uses to explore the nature of work,

licence and mandate are not peculiar to the medical profession or the
professions in general but rather inform the social organisation of an
occupation whether it is the lowliest task or the jewel in the crown of
the division of labour.
An occupation consists, in part, of a successful claim of some peoj e to a licence
to carry out certain activities which others may not, and to do so in exchange
for money, goods or services. Those who have such licence will, if they have any
sense of self-consciousness and solidarity, also claim a mandate to define what is
proper conduct of others toward the matters concerned with their work. The
licence may be nothing more than permission to carry on certain narrowly tech-
nical activities, such as installing electrical equipment, which it is thought
dangerous to allow laymen to do. It may, however, include the right to live
one's life in a style somewhat different from that of most people. The mandate
may go no further than successful insistence that other people stand back and
give the workers a bit of elbow room while they do their work. It may, as in
the case of a modern physician, include a successful claim to supervise and
determine the conditions of work of many kinds of people; in this case, nurses,
technicians and the many others involved in maintaining the modern radical
establishment (1975, p. 58).

Licence and mandate provide a way of looking at social aspects of work.

 Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897-1983) 227
whatever the occupation, permitting the researcher to throw into relief
the peculiar and common elements of a people's work and interaction.
In developing his comparative perspective, Hughes is keen to rid
sociological studies of work and occupations of terminology which
might interfere with seeing that the essential problems of work are the
same whether 'it is conducted within some famous laboratory or in the
messiest vat room of a pickle factory'. The ideas and concepts he
develops provide a method of revealing the routines and realities of
everyday work and illuminating the performance of occupational
actions and activities. The framework is flexible, applicable to work
and occupational life in general yet delicately providing insight into
particular practices and organisational settings. It is a framework which
assists the sociological imagination whilst simultaneously directing the
researcher's game towards certain phenomena and their organisation.
Hughes's approach is designed to capture both the local and general
properties of social interaction and reveal how and why certain forms
arise in particular circumstances. Like Weber's ideal types, Hughes's
framework of concepts and ideas is both heuristic and conceptual; it
provides a way into the empirical materials and a model for describing
a variety of phenomena. No small reason for its success is that the
framework provides a perfect partner to data gathered through field
work, data which are profoundly difficult to conceptualise.
As well as his essays on work and occupations during this post-war
period, Hughes collaborated in a number of empirical projects in-
cluding two major studies of the professions in medicine. The best
known of these is the analysis of student culture and the rites de
passage of the medical undergraduate in Boys in White: Student Culture
in Medical School (1963) with Pecker, Geer and Strauss.'^ A lesser-
known project was the programme of studies developed in collaboration
with the American Nurses Association in the early 1950s. The pro-
gramme sponsored a variety of interdisciplinary studies conducted
throughout the USA concerned with various aspects of nursing, in-
cluding such Hughesian themes as professional socialisation, nursing
careers and their conception of self and others. These studies are
brought together in the book Twenty Thousand Nurses Tell Their
Story (1958) written in conjunction with Helen Hughes and Irwin
Deutscher. Besides these, his publications during this period also in-
cluded Making the Grade: The Academic Side of Student Life, a book
he wrote with Howard Becker and Blanche Geer which extended their
ideas on the socialisation of medical students to the experience of
students in general.
It is always difficult to assess, still further to prove, the influence of
a particular writer whether the field be sociology, philosophy or English
228 Christian Heath
literature. With Hughes the task is made slightly easier since so many
scholars freely cite his influence on their work. We are even lucky
enough to have a collection of papers dedicated to Hughes in which
his students and disciples proclaim his influence on their thought and
work — namely Institutions and the Person (1968) edited by Becker,
Geer, Reisman and Weiss. However, as I am sure these authors would
admit, the full impact of Hughes's work can only be measured by
painstakingly going through the multitude of empirical studies which
emerged within Chicago after the war. And even then one would
capture only a small fraction of the work influenced by Hughes since
his ideas have filtered through generations of researchers and thereby
directly or indirectly informed an immense variety of sociological work.
Within the sociology of health and illness, if Parsons (1951) or
Henderson (1935)''* are considered as first identifying the territory,
then Hughes can be appropriately thought to have provided the equip-
ment for substantial parts of its development. This infiuence derives,
as it does with other substantive domains, from his insistence on field
work and the conceptual framework he provides for the analysis of
work and occupations. A detailed analysis would involve scrutiny of
literally hundreds of studies provided by successive generations of
sociologists. However, if we just briefiy consider a few of the foremost
scholars in the field and the more important studies, we can begin to be
impressed by the significance of Hughes's work.
Erving Goffman, for example, was a student of Hughes first at McGill
and then later at the University of Chicago. In various ways, Goffman's
work reveals his connection with Hughes, especially in its refiection of
Simmel's approach to sociology. More conventionally, Goffman's
essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates
collected in Asylums both theoretically and conceptually develop
many of the ideas and concepts found within Hughes's essays. Few
would deny the influence of Goffman's Asylums within medical socio-
logy still less ignore the collection's massive impact on the organisation
of psychiatric care.
The studies by Anselm Strauss and his colleagues, including Psy-
chiatric Institutions and Ideologies, Awareness of Dying and their
numerous articles on the professions, occupational socialisation and
medical organisations also display Hughes's perspective on the study
of work and occupations. Coming from a different background than
many of the students of Hughes, the pragmatism and social psychology
of Mead and Blumer, Strauss found in Hughes an effective mixture of
sociology and social psychology. We find Strauss and his colleagues
bringing to bear the conceptual machinery of Hughes on a variety of
sociological problems and empirical phenomena. It is perhaps Psychiatric
 Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897-1983) 229
Institutions and Ideologies more than any other study by Strauss and
his colleagues which illuminates the very close links between Hughes's
thought and work and their substantial empirical investigations of
medical organisations and the professions.
Yet another classic within the sociology of health and illness which
can also be found to be permeated with the thought and work of
Hughes is Eliot Freidson's The Profession of Medicine: A Study of
Applied Knowledge. In its discussions of the nature of the medical
profession, of the social construction of illness and of illness careers,
the study delicately develops theories and concepts found within
Hughes essays. As with the studies by Goffman and Strauss and his
colleagues, the ideas and concepts drawn from Hughes allow the author
to both substantiate and expand our sociological knowledge concerning
the organisation of work and occupations.
These are just a few of the enormous variety of empirical and theo-
retical studies within the sociology of health and illness which owe
some debt to Hughes's perspective on the nature of work and organ-
isation. Other works we should discuss would include studies by Fred
Davis, Blanche Geer, Renee Fox, Julius Roth and, of course, Howard
Becker. Becker says of his own work:
No matter what the subject matter 1 turn my attention to, 1 find that my years
of studying and working wdth Everett Hughes have marked my approach to it;
1 think that most people who have known him as teacher and colleague have
the same experience. . . . Similarly, Everett taught me to think comparatively,
to look for hidden similarities, for variations on basic sociological themes, in
the welter of concrete data. We generally think of comparative research as
research carried on in more than one society, but Everett's meaning was more
flexible and more rewarding. He taught us to compare parts of our own society
with one another, to compare one time with another, to see the small differ-
ences between closely related phenomena that had great theoretical import
(Beckeretal., 1968, p. 272).
And, just as Hughes through his teaching and writing infiuenced suc-
cessive generations of researchers both within medical sociology and
other substantive domains, so these scholars through their work have
developed and disseminated further his particular form of sociological
inquiry. As Hughes's approach has percolated through successive
generations of researchers, so his own scholarship has become less
familiar to the members of our discipline. Yet the very opaqueness of
Hughes's infiuence on the sociology of health and illness is a sign of
his success both as a teacher and writer. He furnished the discipline
with a framework and method with which to conduct sociological
inquiry, an infiuence so pervasive that he has been able to slip behind
the riches generated through its application by others.
230 Christian Heath
The full impact of the thought and work of Everett Hughes on
sociology and the emergence of medical sociology is still relatively un-
known and remains to be documented. It is pleasing, however, to find
that during his career Hughes was acknowledged within the discipline
as an important scholar, teacher and writer. At the University of
Chicago he soon became a full professor and chaired the department
from 1952 to 1956. In 1961 he became Professor of Sociology at
Brandeis and then later Boston College, who are now forming a memo-
rial library dedicated to his work. For many years Everett and Helen
Hughes co-edited the American Journal of Sociology. He became
President of the American Sociological Association and Honorary
President of the Canadian Sociological and Anthropological Association
and a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences. He received honorary degrees
from numerous universities including Sir George Williams University,
Michigan State and Queens. In 1981 he received the American Socio-
logical Association Award for a Career of Distinguished Scholarship.
Few scholars deserve more the glittering prizes of our discipline; both
as a teacher and writer he made an important contribution to the social
sciences and the development of sociology. However, it is perhaps we
who work within the sociology of health and illness who owe Hughes a
special debt, not just for his infiuence on the emergence of so many
fine empirical studies but for his sociological imagination within the
realm of health care and the professions of medicine.

Department of Sociology
University of Surrey
Guild ford, Surrey, U.K.

Notes

1. I wish to express my thanks to Robert Dingwall for requesting this article

and his valuable comments on an earlier draft, and to Julian Laite and John
Lee of the University of Manchester for originally introducing me to the
importance of Hughes's thought and work.
2. I have included an extensive bibliography of Hughes's work at the end of
this essay.
3. See the reviews by Becker (1983) and Reisman (1983). Other bits and pieces
of biographical information may be found or gleaned in Becker et al. (1968)
and in some of the books and articles written by Hughes (1943, 1952, 1958,
1971 and 1961c, 1963b, 1964b, and 1970, reprinted in 1971), etc.
4. These included teaching English in the Green Day Area and later at the Inland
Steel Company to European immigrants. Later, whilst in graduate school,
Hughes worked for the Chicago Park Service and was thereby brought into
contact with the various ethnic neighbourhoods of the city, see Reisman
(1983).
 Everett Cherrington Hughes (1997-1983) 231

5. Park went to the University of Michigan, taking a degree in philosophy under

John Dewey. After some years as a reporter he then took an MA in Psychology
and Philosophy at Harvard under Hugo Munsterberg, William James and
Josiah Royce. Park's only formal instruction in sociology was that which he
received from Simmel in Berlin in 1899 and the concerns of his doctorate
thesis perhaps reflect the Simmelian influence: 'Masse und Publikum, ein
methodologische und soziologische Untersuching' (The Crowd and the Public,
a methodological and sociological investigation) University of Heidelberg.
Besides the many references to Simmel in Hughes's work, Hughes wrote on
Simmel (1965) and translated Simmel's essay on sociability (1949). Park also
introduced Hughes to the work of Gabriel Tarde though Hughes admits that
he only began to read Tarde's studies, in particular, the Psychologie econo-
mique, some years later following Park's death. See Hughes (1961; 1971).
6. Anyone familiar with Hughes's work will know that he draws freely from a
multitude of sources, both social scientific, non-fictional and fictional.
Within sociology it should be mentioned that besides these influences,
references to both Durkheim and Weber recur throughout his writings. See
for example his review 1961, and paper concerning occupational culture,
1971.
7. For details concerning Hughes's days at McGill see 1963, 1971 and the
preface to 1971.
8. For other work by Hughes durir^ this period see, for example, Hughes 1937,
1938 and 1939.
9. Cf. Becker 1983 and Becker et al. 1968; Hughes (1956; 1971).
10. In the early 1950s Hughes initiated a research project concerned with the
nature of field work. It was conducted in conjunction with Buford Junker
and supported by the Ford Foundation. Lloyd Warner and Robert Redfield
served as advisors. The project was developed and written up by Buford
Junker and published as Field Work: An Introduction to the Social Sciences,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. See Hughes (1960b; 1971).
11. See the excellent discussion by Philip Collins (1973) concerning the ways in
which Dickens collected and recorded observations through his late night,
city wanderings. Cf. Becker 1963; Hughes's continual curiosity in everyday
matters of the social world, an aspect which is evident in all of Hughes's
writings.
12. '2. W. Lloyd Warner, Robert J. Havighurst, Burleigh Gardner, Frederick Harbison,
William F. Whyte, and I were members of a Committee on Human Relations in indus-
try. Many graduate students worked with us, as well as other members of the staff.
Among the students of sociology who had a hand in the varous projects in industry
or in study of occupations were: Robert Dubin, Harold Wilensky, Harvey L. Smith,
Melville Dalton, Edward Fross, Robert W. Habenstein, Edith Lentz, Donald Roy, the
late Mczell Hill, William Hale, David Solomon, Orvis Collins, Lee Rainwater, and
David Moore. There were others at the peak of the enterprise, and also some later.
The peak in the study of occupations came later than that of industrial studies.
Some members of the committee continued to work together, but on somewhat
different projects (1971, p. 418, footnote 2).
13. As far as I am aware this document was never published though many of
its themes are discussed in Hughes's papers on work and occupations.
14. I cannot resist quoting from Hughes's discussion of the contact between
Park and Henderson:
He went on to study at Strasbourg, with Windelband: there he met L.J. Henderson, a
232 Christian Heath

fellow American student, who became a noted biochemist, and who turned the attention
of his Harvard colleagues to the sociological treatise of the Italian engineer and
economist, Alfredo Pareto. In the late 1930s, I spent a lively day with Park and Hender-
son in northern Vermont. Henderson, a tremendous talker, allowed that his old friend
Park was a good sociologist mainly because he had learned it for himself rather than
from professionals, but maintained that all future good sociology would be done by
scholars trained in physical and biological sciences. Park, as usual, talked in his quiet,
speculative - sometimes profane - way about ideas, ignoring Henderson's outiageous
condescension. It was clear they liked and respected each other. The strands of the
sociological movement have not been so separate as we often believe.

References
Becker, H. (1961), The Outsiders: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance, New
York: Free press.
Becker, H. and Everett Cherrington Hughes (19S3), American Sociological Asso-
ciation, Footnotes, April, p. 8.
Becker, H., with B. Geer, D. Reisman, P.S. Weiss (eds.) (1968), Institutions and
the Person: Essays Presented to Everett Hughes, Chicago: Aldine, (1973).
Collins, P., (1973), 'Dickens and London', in Dyos H.J. and Wolff, M. (eds). The
Victorian City. Images and Realities, vol. II, pp. 537-59, London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul.
Freidson, E. (1969), The Profession of Medicine: A Study ofthe Sociology of
Applied Knowledge, New York: Dodds Mead.
Goffman, F. (1961), Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients
and other Inmates, New York: Doubleday.
Henderson, L.J. (1935), 'Physician and Patient as a Social System', New England
Journal of Medicine, vol. 212, 2 May, pp. 819-23.
Hughes, E.C., see bibliography.
Park, R.E. and E.W. Burgess (eds) (1969), Introduction to the Science of
Sociology, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Parsons, T. (1950), The Social System, Glencoe: Free Press.
Reisman, D. (1983), 'The legacy of Everett Hughes', Contemporary Sociology.
Sept. pp. 477-81.
Strauss, H., Schatzman, L., Becker, R., Ehrlich, D. and Sabshin, M. (1964),
Psychiatric Institutions and Ideologies, Glencoe: Free Press.
Tarde, G. (1902), Psychologic economique, 2 vols, Paris: Felix Alean.
Wylie, (1956), Village in the Vaucluse, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

A bibliography of the work of Everett Cherrington Hughes (1927-71)

I have taken the opportunity to provide an extensive bibliography of Hughes's
work. I have drawn this from Becker et al. (1961) pp. 368-72 and a variety of
other sources. For clarity I have separated books from articles and attempted to
indicate when articles are reprinted in one of the collections of Hughes's work:
* reprinted in Men and Their Work.
+ reprinted in Where Peoples Meet.
@ reprinted in The Sociological Eye.
 Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897-1983) 233

Books
1943 French Canada in Transition, Chicago: University of Chicago, reprinted
in a Phoenix paperback edition with foreword by Nathan Keyfitz,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
1952 Where Peoples Meet: Racial and Ethnic Frontiers, with Helen MacGill
Hughes, Glencoe: Free Press.
1958 Men and Their Work, Glencoe, Free Press.
1958 Twenty Thousand Nurses Tell Their Story, with Helen MacGill Hughes
and Irwin Deutscher, Philadelphia: Lippincott.
1958 Race: Individual and Collective Behaviour, edited with T. Thompson,
Glencoe: Free Press.
1961 Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School, with H. Becker, B.
Geer and A. Strauss, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1968 Making the Grade: The Academic Side of Student Life, with H. Becker
and B. Geer, New York: John Wiley.
1971 The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers On Institution and Race (Part I)
and Self and the Study of Society (Part II), Chicago: Aldine Atherton.

Articles (in order of publication)

1927-8 'A study of a secular institution: the Chicago Real Estate Board',
Abstracts of Theses, University of Chicago, Humanistic Series, vol. VI.
1928 @* 'Personality Types and the Division of Labor', American Journal of
Sociology, March, vol. 33, no. 5, pp. 754-68.
1928 'The growth of an institution: the Chicago Real Estate Board' (1) un-
published PhD dissertation. University of Chicago. (2) The Society of
Social Research of the University of Chicago, Series II, Monograph No. 1,
Chicago, 1931.
1933 'The French-English margin in Canada', American Journal of Sociology,
July, vol. 39, no. l,pp. 1-11.
1935 @ 'The Industrial Revolution and the Catholic movement in Germany',
Social Forces, Dec, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 286-92.
1936 @ 'The ecologic aspects of institutions', American Sociological Review,
April, voL 1, no. 2, pp. 180-92.
1936 'French Canadian communities'. Bulletin of the Society for Social
Research, June, vol. 7, p. 1.
1937 @ 'Institutional office and the person', American Journal of Sociology,
Nov.,vol. 63, pp. 404-13.
1938 'Industry and the rural system in Quebec', Canadian Journal of Eco-
nomics and Political Science, Aug., vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 341-9.
1938 'Position and status in a Quebec industrial town', American Sociological
Review, Oct., vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 709-17.
1939 'Institutions', part V of R.E. Park (ed.). An Outline of the Principles of
Sociology, New York: Barnes & Noble.
1941 @ 'French and English in the economic structure of Montreal', Canadian
Journal of Economics and Political Science, Nov., vol. 7, no, 4, pp. 493-
505.
1942 @ 'The impact of war on American institutions', American Journal of
Sociology, Nov., vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 398-403.
234 Christian Heath

1943 'Programme de recherches sociales pour le Quebec', Cahiers de I'Ecole des

Sciences Sociales, vol. II, no. 4. Quebec: Laval University, p. 41.
1944 'The problem of planning in Quebec', in Housing arui Community Planning
Montreal: McGill University.
1945 @ 'Dilemmas and contradictions of status', American Journal of Sociology,
March, no. 1, pp. 353-9.
1945 Rencontre de deux mondes: La Crise d'industrialisation du Canada
Francais. Montreal: Parizeau, p. 388.
1946 @+'The knitting of racial groups in industry', American Sociological Review
Oct., vol. 11, pp. 512-19.
1946 'Race Relations in Industry', in W.F. Whyte (ed.). Industry and Society,
New York: McGraw-Hill.
1946 'Social Institutions', in A.N. Lee (ed.). New Outline of the Principles of
Sociology, New York: Barnes & Noble.
1947 @ 'Leadership and inter-group cooperation'. Applied Anthropology Winter,
vol.4, no. 1, pp. 18-19.
1947 @+'Principle and rationalization in race relations', American Catholic Socio-
logical Review, March, vol. 7, pp. 3-11.
1948 @+'The study of ethnic relations', Dalhousie Review, Jan., vol. 27, no. 4,
pp. 477-82.
1949 @+'Social change and status protest', Phylon, First Quarter, vol. 10, pp.
58-65.
1949 @ 'Queries concerning industry and society growing out of study of ethnic
relations in industry', American Sociological Review, April, vol. 14, pp.
211-20.
1950 'Discussion of the Bryan Report', in Lester Asheim (ed.), A Forum on the
Public Library Inquiry, New York: Columbia University Press.
1950 @* 'Work and self, in J.H. Rohrer and M. Sherif (eds). Social Psychology at
the Crossroads, New York: Columbia University Press.
1951 @ 'Studying the nurse's work', American Jourruil of Nursing, May, vol. 51,
pp. 294-95.
1951 @* 'Mistakes at work', Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science,
Aug., vol. 17, pp. 320-7.
1951 'Mistakes, a Problem in the Sociology of Work', in K.G. Specht (ed.),
Soziologische Forschung in unserer Zeit (in honour of Leopold von
Wiese), Cologne: Westdeutcher Verlag.
1952 @ 'The sociological study of work', American Journal of Sociology, March,
vol. 57, pp. 423-6.
1952 @* 'Psychology: Science and/or Profession'. American Psychologist August,
vol. 7, pp. 441-3.
1953 @* Cycles and Turning Points: The Significance of Initiation in Human
Culture. New York: Executive Council of the Episcopal Church. Collected
Papers of Robert E. Park (ed.). Foreword, vol. 1, Race and Culture 1951,
foreword, vol. 2, Human Communities 1952; foreword, vol. 3, Society
1955, Glencoe: Free Press.
1953 'Regards sur le Quebec' (on industrialization of French Canada), in J.C.
Falardeau (ed.), Essais sur le Quebec contemporain, Quebec: Les Presses
Universitaires Laval, pp. 217-30.
1954 @ 'Professional and career problems of sociology'. Transactions ofthe
Second World Congress of Sociology, vol. 1, pp. 178-85.
 Everett Cherrington Hu^es (1897-1983) 235
1955 @* 'Social role and the division of labour'. Bulletin of the Committee on
Human Development, University of Chicago, pp. 32-8; also Midwest
Sociologist, Spring 1956, pp. 3-7.
1955 The early and the contemporary study of religion, editorial foreword',
American Journal of Sociology, May, vol. 60, no. 6, part 2, pp. i-iv.
1955 @* 'The Gleichschaltung of the German statistical yearbook', American
Statistician Dec, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 8-11.
1955 'New Peoples', in A.W. Lind (ed.). Race Relations in World Perspective,
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1956 @* 'The making of a physician'. Human Organization, vol. 14, pp. 21-5.
1956 @ 'The cultural aspect of urban research', in Leonard B. White (ed.). The
State of the Social Sciences, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1956 @ 'The improper study of man', in Lynn White, Jr (ed.). Frontiers of
Knowledge, New York: Harper.
1956 @ 'Of sociology and the interview: editorial preface', in collaboration with
Mark Penney, American Journal of Sociology, Sept., vol. 62, no. 2, pp.
137-42.
1956 @ 'Anomalies and projections', Daedalus Fall, 1956d, vol. 94, pp. 1133-47.
1956 'A note on George Simmel', Social Problems, Fall, vol. 13, pp. 117-18.
1957 @ 'The study of occupations', in R.K. Merton, L. Broom, and L. Cottrell
(eds). Sociology Today, New York: Basic Books.
1958 @ 'How colleges differ', in Planning College Policy for the Critical Decade
Ahead, New York: College Entrance Examination Board.
1959 @ 'The Academic Mind', Sociological Review, Aug., vol. 24, pp. 570-3.
1959 @ '?KStige', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science Sept., vol. 325, pp. 45-9.
1959 'Professions, Image and Reality', Quarterly of the American Inter-
professional Institute, Summer, vol. 33, pp. 1-7.
1959 @ 'The dual mandate of social science: remarks on the academic division
of labour', Carutdian Journal of Economics and Political Science, Nov.,
vol. 25, pp. 401-10.
1959 'Stress and strain in professional education'. Harvard Educational Review
FaU,vol. 29, pp. 319-29.
1960 @ 'The professions in society', Canadian Journal of Economics and Political
Science, Feb., vol. 26, pp. 54-61.
1960 @ Introduction, 'The place of field work in social science', in Buford Junker
(ed.). Field Work, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1960 @ Students Culture and Perspectives. The Stephenson Lectures of 1959.
Lawrence:
1961 Review of Reinhard Bendix, 'Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait', in
Comparative Studies in Society and History, April, vol. 3, no. 3, pp.
341-50.
1961 @ 'Tarde's psychologie economique: a forgotten classic', American Journal
of Sociology, May, vol. 66, pp. 553-9.
1961 @ 'Education for a profession'. Library Quarterly, Oct., vol. 31, pp. 336-43.
1961 @ 'Ethnocentric sociology'. Social Forces, Oct., vol. 40, pp. 1-4.
1961 @ 'The nature of racial frontiers', in J. Masuoka, and P. Valien (eds). Race
Relations: Problems and Theory. Essays in Honor of Robert E. Park,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
236 Christian Heath

1962 'The expanding horizons of social science', in Henry Chauncy (ed.). Talks
on American Education, Teachers College, Columbia University.
1962 'Student culture and academic effort' with Howard S. Becker and Blanche
Geer, in N. Sanford (ed.). The American College, New York: John Wiley.
Also a briefer version in CoUege and Character, New York: John Wiley,
1964.
1962 @ 'What other?' in A.M. Rose (ed.). Human Behaviour and Social Processes,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.
1962 'Professional and career problems of sociology'. International Sociological
Association (Transactions of the Fifth World Congress), Washington D.C.
Sept., vol. l,pp. 178-85.
1962 Introduction to Black Metropolis. C. Drake and H.R. Cayton, New York:
Harper & Row, Torchbook Edition.
1962 @ 'Disorganization and reorganization'. Human Organization Summer.
1962 @ 'Good people and dirty work'. Social Problems, vol. X, Summer.
1962 'Sociologists and the Public', Transactions of the Fifth World Congress of
Sociology, Washington D.C.
1963 'Professions in cross-cultural perspective', in I.T. Sanders (ed.). The Pro-
fessional Education of Students from Other Lands, New York: Council
on Social Work Education.
1963 @ 'Desires and needs of society'. Journal of American Medical Association,
July, vol. 185, no. 2, pp. 120-2.
1963 @ 'Natural history of a research project: French Canada', Anthropologica,
pp. 225-39. Reprinted in M. Stein, A. Vidich and J. Bensman (eds.).
Reflections on Community Studies, New York: John Wiley, 1964.
1963 'Profession', Daedalus, Fall, vol. 92, no. 4, pp. 655-68.
1963 @ 'Is education a discipline?' in Walton and Knethe (eds). The Discipline of
Education, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
1963 @ 'Race relations and the sociological imagination', American Sociological
Review, Dec, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 897-90.
1964 @ 'A sociologist's view', in John S. Dickey (ed.). The United States and
Canada, published for the American Assembly, Columbia University,
Englewood Qiffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
1964 @ 'The sociological point of view', in B. Highsaw (ed.). The Deep South in
Transition, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
1964 @ 'Founders of social science: E. Park', New Society, 31 December.
1965 @ 'French Canada still in transition', the Adair Lectures on French Canada,
McgUl University, Feb-March (duplicated).
1965 'Comments on Poverty', American Journal of Sociology, July, vol. 71,
pp. 75-^.
1965 @ 'Professions', Daedalus, vol. 92, no. 4.
1965 * 'Anomalies and projections', Daedalus, vol. 94 Fall, pp. 1133-1147, also
pp. 695-708 in The Negro American, edited by Parsons and B. Clark,
Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1966.
1966 Career Patterns of Young Montrealers in Certain White-Collar Occupations.
Report prepared for the Royal Commission of Bilingualism and Bi-
culturalism, pp. 156.
1966 'Are the clergy a profession?' in P. Scherer and O. Wodel, (eds). The
Church and Its Manpower Management. Depart, of Ministry, Vocation and
Pastoral Services, National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
 Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897-1983) 237

1967 Harvard Educational Review, vol. 37, pp. 267-9, Letter to the Editors (on
the American Negro College).
1967 'The first young sociologist', in Ernest Watson Burgess, 1886-1966. Four
talks given at a Memorial Service, University of Chicago, pp. 1-8.
1968 'Medical education in historical and social perspective', Joumal of Medical
Education, vol. 43, pp. 159-66.
1968 'Work and leisure', in Parsons (ed.), American Sociology: Perspectives,
Problems, Methods. New York: Basic Books.
1968 'De Gaulle - the happening, the word, the exegesis', Trans-action, vol. 5,
Oct., pp. 41-6.
1969 'Institutions', being Part 3, pp. 123-85 in Lee, A.M. (ed.). Principles of
Sociology, Third Edition, New York: Barnes & Noble.
1969 'Comment on Lieberson's statement about measurement of bilingualism',
in Kelly, L.G. (ed.). Description and Measurement of Bilingualism, an
International seminar, Canada, University of Toronto Press (in association
with the Canadian National Commission for UNESCO).
1969 Foreword to J. Miller, Prescription for Leadership, Training for the
Medical Elite, Chicago: Aldine.
1969 'Regionalism in French Canada', chap. 4, pp. 60-7 in Wade, Mason, (ed.)
Regionalism in the Canadian Community, Toronto, University of Toronto
Press.
1970 'The Linguistic division of labor in industrial and urban societies'. Pro-
ceedings of the Georgetown University 21st Round Table of Linguistics.
1970 'The humble and the proud: the comparative study of occupations'.
Sociological Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 2.
1970 @ 'Teaching as Field Work'. American Sociologist, vol. 5, no. 1, Feb.