 | Peter H. Marris |
Sociologist studied urban life and issues
Peter H. Marris, a sociologist and novelist who taught at Yale from 1993 to 2004, died of cancer at home in Guilford on June 25. He was 79 years old.
Marris wrote books about troubled cities in the United States, England, Kenya and Nigeria, and explored the many roles of sociologists as "witnesses, engineers and storytellers" dealing with urban life.
His nine books include "Widows and Their Families," "The Experience of Higher Education," "African Businessmen" (with Anthony Somerset), "Family and Social Change in An African City," "Dilemmas of Social Reform" (with Martin Rein) and "Loss and Change." While several of his books on social policy probed housing and urban renewal efforts, his later ones -- including "Meaning and Action" and "The Politics of Uncertainty" -- extended psychiatrists' and psychologists' theories of attachment to their widest social and political implications. His novel "The Dreams of General Jerusalem" depicted the struggle for development in an African country amid the well-meaning but misguided interventions of American philanthropists.
Born in London, England, July 6, 1927, the son of George Marris and Nancy Eaton, he attended Bryanston, a public school in Dorset. Called up for military service, he served as a translator for the British air force in postwar Japan before studying philosophy and psychology at Cambridge University. In the early years of his career, he worked for the Colonial Service in Kenya. In 1955, he joined the Institute of Community Studies in London, where he worked with Michael Young, Peter Willmott and Phyllis Willmott to develop and extend innovative approaches to urban social research.
A consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation (for which he wrote an influential report on urban renewal in the United States in 1961), he taught at the University of California, both at Berkeley and at Los Angeles. He also taught at Yale, with affiliation at the Department of Sociology.
Marris is survived by his wife, Professor Dolores Hayden of Yale, whom he married in 1975; his daughter, Laura Hayden Marris BK'10; his brother, Tyrrell Marris; his nephew, Arthur Marris; and his two nieces, Lucy Marris and Dr. Gay Marris. Donations in his memory can be made to Family Care International, a non-profit group dedicated to the health of women and adolescents in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean (www.familycareintl.org).
T H I S
In Memoriam: Peter H. Marris
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