Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (born July 17, 1931)''Contemporary Authors Online'', s.v. "Hanna Fenichel Pitkin." Accessed March 5, 2008. is an American

political theorist A political theorist is someone who engages in constructing or evaluating political theory, including political philosophy. Theorists may be Academia, academics or independent scholars. Here the most notable political theorists are categorized b ...

. She is best known for her seminal study ''The Concept of Representation'', published in 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 PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

and gender in political and social theory.

Biography

Pitkin is a

Professor Emerita ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

of Political Science at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. Daughter of Otto Fenichel, Pitkin was born in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

and emigrated to the United States in 1938; her family had fled

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

for Oslo and Prague in the interim. She received her

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree from UC Berkeley in 1961. In 1982, she was granted the Distinguished Teaching Award from UC Berkeley.

Political representation

In ''The Concept of Representation'' Pitkin describes four types of representation: formalistic, descriptive, symbolic and substantive.

Books

Pitkin's books are ''The Concept of Representation'' (1967), ''

Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrians, Austrian-British people, British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy o ...

and Justice'' (1972, 1984, 1992), and ''Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of

Niccolò Machiavelli Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli ( , , ; 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527), occasionally rendered in English as Nicholas Machiavel ( , ; see below), was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. ...

'' (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 ), location=Uppsala, Sweden, date= The Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science ( sv, Skytteanska priset) was established in 1995 by the Johan Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University. The foundation itself goes back to the donation in 1622 from J ...

"for her groundbreaking theoretical work, predominantly on the problem of representation".Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science
, official website. She was married to political theorist John Schaar. Some of her students are noteworthy political scientists such as

David Laitin David D. Laitin (born in 1945) is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science in the School of Humanities and Science at Stanford University. He is a comparative politics scholar who has written works on civil war, ...

(Stanford University), Dan Avnon (Hebrew University, Jerusalem),

Lisa Wedeen Lisa Wedeen is Professor of Political Science and the College and Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. In 1995, Wedeen received her Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, ...

(University of Chicago), and

Mary G. Dietz Mary Golden Dietz (born 1951) is the John Evans Emerita Professor of Political Theory at Northwestern University. She holds a joint appointment in Northwestern's Department of Political Science and its Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. She ...

(Northwestern University).

References

External links