MacIver, Robert M(orrison)

(born April 17, 1882, Stornoway, Outer Hebrides, Scot.—died June 15, 1970, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Scottish-born U.S. sociologist and political scientist. He taught at the University of Aberdeen and later at Canadian and U.S. universities, principally Columbia (1915–26). He believed in the compatibility of individualism and social organization and saw societies as evolving from highly communal states to states in which individual functions and group affiliations were extremely specialized. His works included The Modern State (1926), Leviathan and the People (1939), and The Web of Government (1947).

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