INTRODUCTION

Among sociologists and other behavioral and social scientists, Morris Rosenberg is most widely known for his comprehensive and theoretically rich work on the self-concept. Indeed, Rosenberg is arguably the most important self-esteem theorist since William James. Society and the Adolescent Self-Image, the seminal contribution to the field, shared the American Association for the Advancement of Science Sociopsychological Prize in 1963; Black and White Self-Esteem: The Urban School Child (1972) resolved an anomaly that had vexed researchers of self-esteem for years; and Conceiving the Self (1979) earned him the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association in 1981.

Therefore, to understand contemporary work on self-esteem and the self-concept in general, one has to have some understanding of the context from which Rosenberg's theories of the self-concept have arisen; hence, a look at his training and career is highly instructive.

But Morris Rosenberg's bequest to the discipline of sociology is much broader and deeper. In particular, a close reading of his theoretical and empirical studies reveals that his singular contribution to our fuller understanding of society is his ability to construct connections between sometimes apparently unlinked elements of our discipline.

I will focus on three important examples of synthesis. First, within microsociology, his study of the self has combined two distinct paradigms: cognitive social psychology and symbolic interactionism; his ability to see the self as both an entity and a process has enriched our understanding of the social development of the individual.