Margaret Archer
Margaret Scotford Archer FAcSS MAE (20 January 1943 – 21 May 2023) was an English sociologist, who spent most of her academic career at the University of Warwick where she was for many years Professor of Sociology. She was also a professor at l'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. She is best known for coining the term elisionism in her 1995 book Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. On 14 April 2014, Archer was named by Pope Francis to succeed former Harvard law professor and US Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon as President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences,[2] and served in this position until her retirement on 27 March 2019.
Margaret Archer
20 January 1943
21 May 2023 (aged 80)
Margaret Scotford Archer
The Educational Aspirations of English Working Class Parents (1967)
- Culture and Agency (1988)
- Realist Social Theory (1995)
- Being Human (2000)
Life[edit]
Archer studied at the University of London, graduating BSc in 1964 and PhD in 1967 with a thesis on The Educational Aspirations of English Working Class Parents. She was a lecturer at the University of Reading from 1966 to 1973.
Archer was one of the most influential theorists in the critical realist tradition. At the 12th World Congress of Sociology, she was elected as the first female President and the 11th president of the International Sociological Association (1986–1990),[3] was a founding member of both the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences. She was a trustee of the Centre for Critical Realism.
Archer supervised a number of PhD students, some of whom went on to contribute towards the substantive development of critical realism in the social sciences, including Robert Archer, author of Education Policy and Realist Social Theory,[4] Sean Creaven, author of Marxism and Realism,[5] and Justin Cruickshank, author of Realism and Sociology.[6]
On 3 November 2020, she received the international prize entitled in honour of don Oreste Benzi, which has been given in Bologna by hand of the patriarch Francesco Moraglia. Her praiseworthy work of mercy was the creation of a female structure for the recovery of poor people.[7]
Archer died on 21 May 2023, at the age of 80.[8]
Controversy[edit]
In an interview with Bloomberg, Archer discussed the attendance of US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences that she had organized. Archer accused Sanders of a "monumental discourtesy", claiming he sought to politicize his attendance after having lobbied for an invitation to the conference, failing to notify her office.[11] Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the Chancellor of the academy, and senior to Archer, took issue with Archer's version of events. After repeatedly refusing to tell a Bloomberg reporter which party had initiated contact, Sánchez Sorondo insisted that proper protocol had been followed in issuing the invitation: "This is not true and she knows it. I invited him with her consensus." The invitation in question bore his signature as well as Archer's name (but not her signature) and stated that Sánchez Sorondo was inviting Sanders "on behalf of" Archer.[12][11]