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Alice Thorner

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American-born social scientist and statistician
Alice Thorner
Born1917
Latvia
Died24 August 2005(2005-08-24) (aged 89–90)
Paris, France
NationalityAmerican
Scientific career
FieldsSocial science

Alice Thorner (1917 – 24 August 2005) was a Latvian-born social scientist and statistician whose main research effort seems to have been partly devoted to the role assigned to women in the Indian society.

Early years

Alice Ginsburg was born in present-day Latvia in 1917. Her family emigrated to the USA, and she earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1937. For her graduate studies she entered Columbia University, where she met her future husband and co-worker Daniel Thorner, before graduating with an M.A. in social psychology in 1941. A member of her family may have turned her maiden name into Gaines due to the rise of American antisemitism in the thirties.

Move to England

A stay in London, partly funded by a doctoral fellowship of her husband, may have been the begin of several long-lasting friendships with Indian social scientists, like P N Haksar and Trivedi who would later greet her on a yearly basis in the country she enjoyed studying and played a key role in a shift towards a more left-wing view of society.

Stay in India

A so-called witchhunt against some scientists that did not entirely reject some ideas described in part of the writings due to a soviet agrarian economist named Alexander V. Chayanov associated to a husband refusal to testify against some friends they met in London lead to several grant losses and was associated to an American passport withdrawal and significantly darkened university career prospects for both. A long stay in India that had been planned before begun in spite of these difficulties. Thorner significantly contributed to updating a method of accounting for various categories of working women in later census as a consultant for the Indian government. A book entitled Land and Labour in India was later co-authored with her husband as a summary of a relatively fruitful study of an India society.

Settlement in France

Charles Bettelheim played a role in presenting the Thorners to the director of studies Louis Dumont at the Sorbonne-based École pratique des hautes études. A development of what would later become an Indian social science department in School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences lead to an invitation by Fernand Braudel. An absence of a PhD degree lead to some difficulties at becoming a lecturer, when the Thorners decided to live in France.

Later life

A one-year period of illness due to cancer led Daniel Thorner into starting a 1974 world tour alone and his later death seems to have deeply affected Alice. School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences was the place where she attempted to keep teaching for close to twenty years and the invited professors of which she attempted to stay in contact through numerous invitations at her Parisian home. A significant fraction of the writings of her husbands was published after his death due to her editing efforts. She made a point at returning to India every year and tried to strengthen the links between Indian and French social scientists by sometimes organizing symposia or keeping in touch with a few other social scientists in France and abroad such as Marc Gaborieau, Jacques Pouchepadass, Sujata Patel and John DeFrancis.

Family

Alice and Daniel Thorner had two sons and two daughters who produced a total of five grandchildren.

Death

She died at the American Hospital of Paris in 2005. She was cremated and her ashes were buried next to her husband Daniel in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

References

  1. Patnaik, Utsa (21 September 2005). "Alice Thorner (1918-2005)". Monthly Review. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  2. Agarwal, Bina (2005-11-06). "Literary Review". The Hindu. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  3. ^ Thorner, D. 1977 Investment in Empire: British Railway and Steam Shipping Enterprise in India Ayer Publishing. ISBN 0-405-09723-9
  4. ^ Thorner, A., Patel, S., Bagchi, J., & Raj, K. 2001 Thinking Social Science in India: Essays in Honour of Alice Thorner. Sage Publications. pp 23 ISBN 0-761-99600-1
  5. Chayanov, A. 1986 On the theory of peasant economy Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-1864-1
  6. Thorner, A. Excerpts from an FBI file Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 17, No. 21 (May 22, 1982), pp. 878-884
  7. Gaborieau, M. Alice Thorner (1917-2005) Diogenes November 2006 53 pp. 135-138
  8. Patel, S. and Thorner, A. 1995 Bombay: metaphor for modern India Oxford India Paperbacks. ISBN 0-195-63688-0
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