Edelman, Murray (1919–2001)

Murray J. Edelman studied the symbolic and subjective nature of politics to reveal the latent meanings of political performance. Born in Pennsylvania, Edelman received a bachelor's degree in social sciences from Bucknell University in 1941. He then earned a master's degree in history from the University of Chicago in 1942 and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois in 1948. Prior to his 40-year career in academia, Edelman investigated labor-management relations and public policy. He was on the faculty of the University of Illinois from 1948 to 1966. In 1966, Edelman joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, where he was the George Herbert Mead Professor Emeritus of Political Science and received numerous other distinctions including Fulbright Awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Murray retired from the University of Wisconsin in 1990.

Edelman's innovative and classic book The Symbolic Uses of Politics, which was published in 1964, is the seminal work on symbolic politics, and it continues to exert a widespread influence on scholarly research. The Symbolic Uses of Politics explores the use of myths, rites, and other symbolic forms of communication in the formation of public opinion and policy. In the book, Edelman notes that, while the conventional study of politics concentrates on how people acquire what they want through government, his book “concentrates on the mechanisms through which politics influences what they want, what they fear, what they regard as possible, and even who they are.” The theses of the book, which are centered on the notion that democracy is largely symbolic and expressive in function, have fostered vibrant scholarly debate. According to Edelman, political reality is accessible to the public through the generation of symbols by the politically elite.

Edelman wrote 10 other books exploring various angles of the issues of which The Symbolic Uses of Politics laid the foreground. These books include Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence (1971), which explored the generation of political perception and public opinion in democracies and mass political action, and Constructing the Political Spectacle (1988), in which Edelman argued prevailing political ideologies constrain even the politically savvy with a false consciousness wherein they reify the dominant ideology even while they are thinking otherwise. Edelman further explored the subjective nature of political process with a focus on art in From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions, written in 1995. Edelman also wrote Securities Regulation in the 48 States in 1942, Political Language: Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail in 1977, and The Politics of Misinformation, which was finished shortly before his death by his daughter Lauren Edelman.