Franz Schurmann

Herbert Franz Schurmann (June 21, 1926 – August 20, 2010) was an American sociologist and historian who was best known for his research and writings about Communist China during the Cold War period. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley in the Departments of Sociology and History for 38 years, and he also served a term as the head of the Center for Chinese Studies. He was an early opponent of the Vietnam war, and was the first American professor to visit Hanoi during the bombing raids there. He co-founded the Pacific News Service in 1970 together with author Orville Schell, serving as editor and commentator, and wrote the weekly "Predictions" column.^[1]

Life and scholarly career

Schurmann was born on June 21, 1926, in Astoria, Queens and grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut. He developed fluency in as many as 12 languages, acquiring them from his Slovenian father who spoke five languages himself, his mother who was an immigrant from Germany and from the dialects spoken in the melting pot community where he was raised. He briefly attended Trinity College in nearby Hartford, Connecticut. He was drafted by the United States Army during World War II and was assigned to learn Japanese, serving as a newspaper censor during the American Occupation of Japan. He befriended Stefan Brecht during his Army service and met Thomas Mann and other German emigres at the California home of Stefan's father Bertolt Brecht. After completing his military service he was awarded a Ph.D. in Asian studies from Harvard University, which he was able to attend using his G.I. Bill benefits as a veteran.^[2][3]

During the late 1950s, Schurmann spent two years exploring Afghanistan on horseback, where he documented a blue-eyed, blond-haired tribe that descended from the invasions by Genghis Khan, a history that he recounted in his 1962 book The Mongols of Afghanistan: An Ethnography of the Moghôls and Related Peoples of Afghanistan.^[3] He was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, founding the Berkeley Faculty Peace Committee in 1965 and visiting North Vietnam with author and political activist Mary McCarthy in 1968. In 1967, Schurmann signed a letter declaring his intention to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the U.S. war against Vietnam, and urging other people to also take this stand.^[4]

His major work Ideology and Organization in Communist China, was published in 1966, just as Mao's Cultural Revolution was starting, and was revised and enlarged in 1968 and 1971. A widely influential analysis, the book applied the sociological insights of Max Weber to interviews Schurmann conducted in Hong Kong with refugees and wide reading in Chinese newspapers and documents. The book demonstrates how Mao Zedong's ""dialectical conception of Chinese society" structured his organizational approach to the Chinese Communist Party and the government. The book argued that a "consistent yet changing ideology" created a web of organization which covered and penetrated all aspects of Chinese society, building from the 1930s.^[5] He edited the three-volume series The China Reader with Orville Schell, a student of his who became an author and China expert in his own right. Together with Schell, he established the Pacific News Service in 1970, with the goal of providing Americans with more detailed coverage of news from Asia and Latin America. The service created New America Media in 1996, a multimedia ethnic news agency and a coalition of ethnic media.^[2]

His 1974 work The Logic of World Power provided a summary of international relations following World War II. The Foreign Politics of Richard Nixon, a book he wrote in the 1970s about the U.S. President's role in foreign affairs was not published until 1987.

As he developed his thinking about global power and economy, he expanded his skills to keep abreast of world developments. Already fluent in French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and other languages, he now in his sixties learnt enough written Arabic to be able to read the Koran and the Arab language press. This enabled him to write hundreds of columns for Pacific News, reporting on the development and goals of militant Islam.^[3]

He died at age 84 on August 20, 2010, at his home in San Francisco due to complications of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. He is survived by his wife of 42 years, journalist Sandy Close, as well as by two sons, Peter & Mark Schurmann, his daughter-in-law, Aruna Lee and his grandson Leon.^[3]

Publications

References