Hanna Fenichel Pitkin
Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (born July 17, 1931)[1] is an American political theorist. She is best known for her seminal study The Concept of Representation, published in 1967.
Hanna Fenichel Pitkin | |
---|---|
Born | Berlin, Germany | July 17, 1931
Nationality | American |
Spouse(s) | John Schaar (died 2011) |
Awards | Skytte Prize (2003) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
Thesis | The Theory of Political Representation (1961) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Political science |
Sub-discipline | Political theory |
School or tradition | Berkeley school |
Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
Doctoral students | |
Notable works | The Concept of Representation (1967) |
Pitkin's diverse interests range from the history of European political thought from ancient to modern times, through ordinary language philosophy and textual analysis, to issues of psychoanalysis and gender in political and social theory.
Biography
Hanna Pitkin was born in Berlin, to Jewish parents, in 1931. The family fled nazi Germany in 1933 for Oslo, Norway. They moved to Prague before immigrating to the United States when she was 6 years of age.[2]
Pitkin is a Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Daughter of Otto Fenichel, Pitkin was born in Berlin and emigrated to the United States in 1938.[1] She received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from UC Berkeley in 1961. In 1982, she was granted the Distinguished Teaching Award from UC Berkeley.[3]
Political representation
In The Concept of Representation Pitkin describes four types of representation: formalistic, descriptive, symbolic and substantive.[4]
Books
Pitkin's books are The Concept of Representation (1967), Wittgenstein and Justice (1972, 1984, 1992), and Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (1984, 1999), in addition to numerous articles and edited volumes. In 1998 she published The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt's Concept of "the Social". A wide selection of her writings are collected and thematized in Hanna Fenichel Pitkin: Politics, Justice, Action (2016).
Awards and legacy
In 2003, she was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science "for her groundbreaking theoretical work, predominantly on the problem of representation".[5] She was married to political theorist John Schaar. Some of her students are noteworthy political scientists such as David Laitin (Stanford University), Dan Avnon (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), Lisa Wedeen (University of Chicago), and Mary G. Dietz (Northwestern University).
See also
References
- Contemporary Authors Online, s.v. "Hanna Fenichel Pitkin." Accessed March 5, 2008.
- A Conversation with Hanna Pitkin, Hanna Pitkin and Nancy Rosenblum, Rev. Polit. Sci. 2015. 18:1–10, First published online as a Review in Advance on March 2, 2015, The Annual Review of Political Science is online at polisci.annualreviews.org, This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev-polisci-092514-012354
- Distinguished Teaching Award, UC Berkeley
- "Political Representation". plato.stanford. Jan 2, 2006 (revision Wed Aug 29, 2018).
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(help) - Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science Archived August 30, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, official website.