The Creation Of Settings And The Future Societies

by Seymour B. Sarason

A genuinely groundbreaking work! Sarason is concerned with the underlying logic of settings, their origins and social contexts. He provides a conceptual framework for what happens when "two or more people come together in new and sustained relationships to attain stated objectives." Consider the many familiar marriages, clinics, families, schools, youth centers, conventions, and plays. Sarason offers a detailed analysis of the social process of creating a setting, with examples drawn from education, mental health, architecture, history, political science, government, and other fields. In identifying settings that succeed, he asks such questions What kind of leadership do they require? This neglected problem provides endless fascination for a critical set of issues. Social scientists, psychologists, and researchers in related fields will find this a challenging study. Leaders in any field who are engaged in enterprises involving new settings will find that it has immediate practical value.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Seymour Bernard Sarason was Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught from 1945 to 1989. He is the author of over forty books and is considered to be one of the most significant researchers in education and educational psychology in the United States. The primary focus of his work was on education reform in the United States. In the 1950s he and George Mandler initiated the research on test anxiety. He founded the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic in 1961 and was one of the principal leaders in the community psychology movement.

Reviews

[Margaret McCamant]

One of the people who started the afterschool tutoring program I volunteer for said that this book had great influence on his thinking. His talk was interesting, so I decided to look for the book. The Chicago Public Library found it, as an interlibrary loan from Chicago Theological Seminary, where it seems to have been in storage!

It's been a long time since I tried to read an academic book in the social sciences--slow going.

I read some of this, but skimmed through the rest. Life's too short, and I'm not feeling ambitious.