Paul Lazarsfeld and the Study of Knowledge Applications

The death of Paul Lazarsfeld during the 1976 ASA convention saddened all sociologists. In this paper, three of Lazarsfeld's colleagues at The University of Pittsburgh attempt to put the entire corpus of his works on the sociology of knowledge and communication into perspective, with special reference to his recent work (with Jeffrey G. Reitz, in collaboration with Ann K. Pasanella), An Introduction to Applied Sociology (Elesvier, 1976). They argue that this book opens up many new avenues in a systematic sociology of knowledge applications, a significant contemporary issue in sociology generally as well as within the sociology of knowledge more narrowly construed.[Eds.]