COLLINS, Randall

Randall Collins (p. 1941) grew up in a family of an American diplomat (in this context, as a child, spent several years in Moscow), received a prestigious education at Harvard University (1959-63 gg.), Where just taught the disciples directly Pitirim Sorokin. Impressed by Collins made a lecture T. Parsons, especially, the approach of Max Weber to the analysis of world religions, on the theory of characters and social membership in Durkheim. Here Collins is studying philosophy, acquainted with Quine, listening to lectures P. Tillich. At this time at Harvard, conducted a comparative historical study of agrarian revolutions classic historical sociology of Barrington Moore. In the circle of Harvard psychologists carefully studied the works of LS. Vygotsky, including the cultural-historical nature of the human psyche, thinking as interiorizirovannoy speech, etc.. This influence is quite palpable sense in the works of Collins, including in the book 'Sociology of Philosophies'.

Collins received his doctoral degree at Berkeley (California), where he studied in 1964-68. This university is just in the middle 1960's and early 1970's. there is a rapid blossoming of social science. Here, Collins was a teacher who had come from Chicago, Herbert Blumer - one of the strongest students J. Mead, the actual creator of the theory and the school of symbolic interactionism. Great influence on Collins has also worked at that time in Berkeley, Irving Hoffman, a talented Microsociology, a researcher at the rituals of everyday communication. Collins, assisted by leading theorists, makrosotsiologu and specialist Weber Reinhard Bendix in research on comparative politics. Ibid at Berkeley senior colleague was Arthur Collins Stinchkomb - another brilliant contemporary sociologist and theoretician, unfortunately, we have almost unknown. After receiving his doctorate, Collins begins to teach at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), where he met with the leader of the school ethnomethodology by Harold Garfinkel, while engaged in the development of new methods Microsociology

. Collins got the internship opportunities in Europe's leading intellectual centers, . particularly, . the Paris Ecole Normale Supц?rieure, . University of Vienna, . Universitetete in Lund (Sweden), . in several German academic centers, . Cambridge,
. In the early 1970's. Collins met with Pierre Bourdieu, and they, along with Alvin Gouldnerom founded a new journal 'Theory and Society'. Triumvirate soon broke up, but Collins has since supported a scientific dialogue with Bourdieu and develops his theory of intelligent networks and cultural capital in relating and contrasting parallel development of Bourdieu. Further academic career Collins (where the main stages is to work in the University of California at Riverside, . suburb of Los Angeles and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia - present) is marked by three features - the extraordinary productivity, . broadest historical and sociological outlook and brilliance of theoretical thinking,
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Collins is a brilliant confirmation of one of the most important of his own thesis: creative thinker is the result of his past network interactions. In Collins, the most interesting relationships are in close contact with representatives of both micro-and makrosotsiologii and specialists in the abstract of refined philosophy, political scientists, historical sociologists and psychologists. In terms of a model of intelligent networks Collins is only two steps of network (in Quine) of all members of the Vienna Circle, . is also 'network grandson' Weber (after Parsons) and Dzh.Mida (in Bloomer), . direct disciple of R. Bendix, . H. Garfinkel and J. Hoffmann, . and this is not the listing of all links, . but only an indication of the favorable central position in the intersection of different networks,
. In the work of Collins all the relevant ingredients are, and not as an eclectic mix, as well as a slender building micro-, meso-and macro-theories.

Leave aside the hundreds of articles Collins (cm. at the end of the reference to the Russian translations in the anthology 'Time of Peace') and only list his major books and textbooks: 'Sociology of the conflict: toward an explanatory science' (1975), . 'Society of diplomas: the historical sociology of education and stratification' (1979), . 'Sociology from the middle of the century' (1981), . 'Veberianskaya sociological theory' (1986), . 'Theoretical Sociology' (1987), . 'Sociological insight' (1992),
. Finally, completing its 25-year-old work, Collins published in 1998. his monumental work 'Sociology of Philosophies: A global theory of intellectual change', and in two years completing a new book 'The macro-story: an essay on the sociology of long historical processes' (2000). The scientific books to add Collins and his holmsiansky detective novel (published on behalf of, . as befits Dr. Dzh.Vatsona) 'The case of a ring of philosophers' (1978), . where Sherlock Holmes met with Bertrand Russell and other philosophers on the next save Western civilization,
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For Russia the reader can not fail to note this point in the creative biography of the sociologist as a theoretical prediction of the collapse 'of the Soviet empire' (ie. Warsaw bloc dominated Soviet Union - the whole territory, which was controlled by Soviet troops). This prediction, derived from the overall geopolitical theory, was made and expressed in the leading American universities in 1980, and published in the book 'Veberianskaya sociological theory' (1986). The cardinal difference between them from many other predictions (L. Trotsky, E. d'Ankoss, A. Amalrik, etc.) is the correct scheme of deductive inference from the general theory (derived from the analysis of quite different cases - not Russia!) And the initial conditions for the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in 1980. Article 1995. Collins has made a thorough methodological analysis of the success and limitations of their work.