Bio: (1889-1970) English sociologist, philosopher, and social psychologist. Morris Ginsberg was a professor at the  London School of Economics and Political Science and was the first president of the British Sociological Association. With Leonard T. Hobhouse and G. C. Wheeler, he coauthored the book The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples: An Essay in Correlation (1915). The authors classified societies according to their technological development. They introduced a scheme with seven major ‘‘stages of economic culture’’: (1) Lower Hunters; (2) Higher Hunters; (3) Incipient Agriculturalists; (4) Middle Agriculturalists; (5) Highest Agriculturalists; (6) Lower Pastoralists; and (7) Higher Pastoralists. Pastoralists and agriculturalists in this evolutionary classification function as alternative directions of evolution, and not as a chronological sequence. Studying ethnographic data from over 400 societies, the authors concluded that, as economies develop, increasingly complex and formal forms of government emerge. A similar process happened with social stratification and private property ownership, as both social phenomena became more pronounced at higher economic stages.

Ginsberg also researched topics of social psychology, the unity of mankind, and the idea of social progress.

Main works

The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler People (1914);

The Psychology of Society (1921);

Studies in Sociology (1932);

Sociology (1934);

Essays in Sociology and Social Philosophy (1947).