Rose Laub Coser (born May 4, 1916 August 21, 1994) was a German-American sociologist, educator, and social justice activist. She taught sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1968 until her retirement in 1987. She was interested in the effect of social structures on individuals, and much her work fell within medical sociology, role theory, and sociology of the family.
Early life and family
Rose Laub Coser was born on May 4, 1916, in Berlin, Germany. She is a daughter of Rachel Lea (Lachowsky) Loeb and Elias Laub, a Polish printer and publisher. Her parents were passionate socialists and knew Rosa Luxemburg well. They named their first-born daughter Rose in honor of Luxemburg. Coser grew in a socialist environment upheld by her parents. In 1924, the family moved to Antwerp, Belgium. In Antwerp, Rose Laub lost her younger sister to an accidental death. Then, due to the Nazi threat, the Laubs emigrated to New York City, U.S. in 1939.
Rose Laub married Lewis A. Coser on August 25, 1942. Coser was a refugee who shared a common commitment to socialism with Laub and later became a noted sociologist. Laub and Coser bore two children, Ellen Coser Perrin, who later became a professor of pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Steven Coser, who later became a computer scientist.
Education
Rose Laub Coser studied philosophy at the École Libre des Hautes Étude, which is a Parisian institution that relocated to the New School for Social Research in New York City during the Nazi years. She began to work in the field of psychology by assisting researches of psychoanalyst and experimental child psychologist René Spitz and working for David Riesman on his study of political apathy, called The Lonely Crowd (1950) and Faces in The Crowd (1952). She then attended Columbia University and studied sociology, along with her husband Lewis A. Coser, under Robert S. Lynd and Robert K. Merton. In 1957, Coser earned Ph.D under the supervision of Robert K. Merton.
Contribution
Coser made a number of contributions in many of the institutions she worked at. Her work at the Harvard University Medical School brought on a number of papers, including "Laughter Among Colleagues," which was about humor's social functions in mental hospitals, "Evasiveness as a Response to Structural Ambivalence," and a book, Training in Ambiguity: Social Structure and Professional Socialization in a Mental Hospital.
Coser's major contributions fall within the areas of medical sociology, role theory, sociology of the family, and contemporary gender issues (both within family and the occupational world). Her contributions to medical sociology began at the start of her career. She completed case studies on the effects that bureaucratic organization of medical work affected patients and staff in mental and medical hospitals. Playing on Merton's role theory, Coser focused on the concepts of ambiguity and multiplicity. She was an advocate for the “liberating potential of a broad modern world.” Coser redefined important concepts within role theory and applied them the role of women in the family and workplace. Coser was a passionate feminist, and launched a class-action lawsuit against SUNY, for the recoupment of wages among female faculty and staff. She has served in important positions within the Society of Social Problems and the Eastern Sociological Society. Rose Coser published many works within the fields of medical sociology, sociology of the family, and gender roles. In her book The Family: Its Structures and Functions, discusses the universality of the family structure as well as how these structures may differ depending on the society in which they exist. Her work in this book also included her ideas on the relationship between society and the family, the way that the family shapes individuals whose behaviors and attitudes are appropriate for the society in which they reside, and she even has work on alternative structures of family and the role of women in the family. She was a co-founder of the journal Dissent with Irving Howe and Lewis A. Coser, and frequently published in it. Though she was not particularly religious, Coser's Jewish background allowed her to make several contributions to and fill many gaps in literature on Jewish women.