David Lockwood RIP

I don't really have much to add to David Rose's fine appreciation. I only met David Lockwood on a couple of occasions and we can't have exchanged more than a dozen words. But his work influenced me and The Blackcoated Worker was the first serious sociological study of social class and social status that I read as an undergraduate. It's symptomatic of what had already happened to sociology at the LSE by the late 1970s that it was recommended to me by Alan Dawe who was a visitor to the department. 

Solidarity and Schism is also a fine and subtle book which presents more of a serious intellectual challenge than most of the things that are today prescribed in u/g "theory" courses.  It is really a classic that is ripe to be rediscovered. It shouldn't take more than a moments reflection to convince you that problems of social and system integration are as pressing now as they've always been.

 And what a department it was that David Lockwood joined when he left Cambridge. Essex's Sociology Department in the late 60's was a Real Madrid type collection of galaticos: Peter Townsend, Dennis Marsden, Peter Abell, Patrick Doreian, Alisdair MacIntyre , Geoffrey Hawthorn, Paul Thompson, Herminio Martins. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive...