Nash, Manning, 1914-2001.

Manning Nash, professor of business and anthropology at the University of Chicago, was an expert on economic and social modernization in developing nations.

From the description of Manning Nash papers, 1942-1988 (inclusive) (University of Chicago Library). WorldCat record id: 772527357

Manning Nash (1924-2001) received a B.A. from Temple University in 1949 before coming to the University of Chicago to begin his graduate work. He completed his A.M in Anthropology in 1952, submitting a thesis titled "Rural to Urban Negro Migrants' Attitudes Towards Civil-Political Rights and Religion." His Ph.D., completed in 1955, was based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Guatemala and was later published as a book under the title Machine Age Maya: The Industrialization of a Guatemalan Community. After brief teaching appointments at the University of California in Los Angeles and the University of Washington, Nash returned to The University of Chicago and joined the faculty of the Graduate School of Business in 1957.

In the 1960s, Nash also held an appointment with the Committee on the Comparative Study of New Nations, which took as its focus the end of colonialism and the creation of new countries. During this period, Nash conducted field work in both the newly created Buddhist nation of Burma and Malaysia. He published his findings as The Golden Road to Modernity: Village Life in Contemporary Burma (1965) and Peasant Citizens: Politics, Religion, and Modernization in Kelantan, Malaysia (1974). In both studies, economic development and the place of religion within the context of social change figured prominently.

Nash joined the University of Chicago's Anthropology Department in 1968, serving as Chairman from 1988 to 1991. During this period in his career, his research took him to both Iran and Belize, where he studied religious practices among peasants and farmers. His major publications during this time, however, were comparative in scope: Unfinished Agenda: The Dynamics of Modernization in Developing Nations (1984) and The Cauldron of Ethnicity in the Modern World (1989).

Heralded as a pioneer in the creation of an intellectual framework for studying processes of economic and social modernization in what would eventually be termed the Third World, Nash died in Chicago in 2001.

From the guide to the Nash, Manning. Papers, 1942-1988, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)