Horace Romano Harré

Horace Romano Harré

Rom Harré in Tartu (2011)
Born 18 December 1927
New Zealand
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Analytic philosophy
Precursor to critical realism

Horace Romano Harré (/ˈhær/;[1] born 1927), known widely as Rom Harré, is a distinguished British philosopher and psychologist.

Background

Harré was born in Apiti, in northern Manawatu, near Palmerston North, New Zealand, but holds British citizenship.[2] He studied chemical engineering (for which he retains a great affection) and later graduated with a BSc in mathematics (1948) and a Masters in Philosophy (1952), both at the University of New Zealand, now the University of Auckland.

He taught mathematics at Kings College, Auckland (1948–53) and the University of Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan (19534). He then studied at University College, Oxford, where he completed a B. Phil. under the supervision of J.L. Austin in 1956. After a fellowship at the University of Birmingham he was lecturer at the University of Leicester from 1957 to 1959.

He returned to Oxford as the successor to Frederick Waismann as University Lecturer in Philosophy of Science in 1960 (age 34). At Oxford he was active in the founding of the Honours School of Physics and Philosophy and played an important part in the discursive turn in social psychology, a field he came to in the middle of his career. After mandatory retirement from Oxford in 1995 he joined the psychology department of Georgetown University, Washington, DC where he continues as Distinguished Research Professor teaching every year in the Spring Semester.

He has given occasional courses at both American University in Washington, D.C. and at George Mason University at Fairfax, Virginia. From 2009 until 2011 he served as Director Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics in conjunction with his US post. He has been Visiting Professor at many places, teaching courses at Aoyama University, Tokyo; Universidad Santiago de Compostella, Spain; Universidad Caetano, Peru; Free University at Brussels; Aarhus University in Denmark and elsewhere.

Intellectual interests

Harré is one of the world's most prolific social scientists. Has written on a wide variety of subjects including: philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, ontology, psychology, social psychology, sociology and philosophy. He was an important early influence on the British philosophical movement Critical Realism, publishing Causal Powers with Madden in 1975, the same year as A Realist Theory of Science. He supervised Roy Bhaskar's doctoral studies, and has continued to maintain close involvement with realism. He also supervised Patrick Baert and Jonathan Smith's doctoral studies, respectively in social theory and social psychology. Another one of Harré's distinctive contributions was to the understanding of the social self in microsociology, which he called "ethogenics:" this method attempts to understand the systems of belief or means by which individuals can attach significance to their actions and form their identities, in addition to the structure of rules and cultural resources that underlie these actions.[3]

Awards and festschrifts

Theodore Sarbin Award for 2014 (American Psychological Association, Div 24).

Publications

Books

Edited books

See also

References

  1. Rom Harre on What is Social Science – Social Science Bites
  2. http://www.willamette.edu/~mstewart/cogsci/rom_harre_cv.doc
  3. Burkitt, Ian. (1991). Social Selves: Theories of the Social Formation of Personality. London: SAGE Publications, 55, 6566
  4. http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?id=89718

External links