Carle C. Zimmerman

Carle Clark Zimmerman (1897 to 1983) was an American sociologist, born in Cass County, Missouri, who became an inaugural member of Harvard University's Department of Sociology, created in 1931 alongside Pitirim Sorokin and Talcott Parsons. He studied at the University of Missouri, North Carolina State College, the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1925, and with Charles C. Taylor he wrote Rural Organization: A Study of Primary Groups in Wake County, N.C. (1922), a short work that came to be considered a classic of rural sociology. His best known book is Family and Civilization, which traces the stages of decline, corruption and social disintegration of civilizations as they appear in family structure. He conducted fieldwork on the family in Japan, China, Siam, Cuba, Mexico and Europe, and taught at Harvard until he retired in 1963. His work was not widely accepted in the discipline and is largely forgotten.