Thomas Humphrey Marshall

Thomas Humphrey Marshall (19 December 1893, London – 29 November 1981, Cambridge) was a British sociologist, most noted for his essays, such as the essay collection Citizenship and Social Class.

He was born in 1893 and educated at Rugby School, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a civilian prisoner in Germany during World War I. From 1914 to 1918 he was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and then joined the London School of Economics, the LSE, as a lecturer between 1919 and 1925. He went on to become the Head of the Social Science Department at LSE from 1939 to 1944, and worked for UNESCO as the head of the Social Science Department from 1956 to 1960, possibly contributing to the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which was drafted in 1954, but not ratified until 1966.

Modern political science pioneer Seymour Martin Lipset argues that Marshall proposes a model of social science based on the middle range analysis of social structures and institutions, as opposed to grand theories of the purposes of development and modernisation, which were criticised by modern sociologists such as Robert K. Merton for being too speculative to provide valid results. By using such a middle range approach, Marshall and his mentor L. T. Hobhouse believed that rigid class distinctions could be dissolved and middle class citizenship generalised through a careful understanding of social mechanisms. He also believed this would allow sociology to become an international discipline, helping "to increase mutual understanding between cultures" and further international co-operation. While employing some concepts from Marxist conflict theory, such as social class and revolution, Marshall's analyses are based on functionalist concerns with phenomena such as "consensus, the normal, and anomie; co-operation and conflict; structure and growth," within self-contained systems. Rather than studying "society," which may include non-systemic elements, Marshall argues that the task of sociology is:

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